This is a new service. Your feedback will help us to improve it.

2011 census: Quality assurance

We put the 2011 census outputs through a rigorous quality assurance process before we published them.

2011 Census Quality Strategy

The Office for National Statistics published the Census Quality Strategy in 2011.

It provided a general framework for how the quality of 2011 census data could be:

  • defined
  • managed
  • measured

The strategy did not set out specific standards or measures of census quality.

Our quality assurance process

We published several documents that detailed how we would quality assure 2011 census data. These were:

A variety of comparator sources were used during the quality assurance process.

We also formed an advisory group to support our quality assurance of 2011 census data. The group was made up of our own staff and representatives from local authorities. 

Find out more about the advisory group.

Census Quality Survey

The Census Quality Survey was a follow-up survey to the main census. It was designed to help us assess quality of responses to the main census.

Summary results from the Census Quality Survey are in section 9 of the Scotland's Census 2011 General Report.

Data quality issues

Within 2011 census data, there are some known data quality issues.

These are:

You can check known quality issues with specific census variables in our metadata section.