Tuesday, 13 March 2007
Super Output Areas
A small prize will be available to anyone who can explain to me why areas of extreme deprivation are currently known as 'Super Output Areas' (SOAs). I'm all for talking up areas positively but am having some difficulty identifying what exactly what it is that such areas put out so superbly.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
National Statistics divide the country into geographical areas called Output Areas and Super Output Areas. Statistics are reported against these units rather than Wards (as in the past).
There are 175,434 OAs in England and Wales (165,665 in England; 9,769 in Wales).
There are 34,378 Lower Layer SOAs (32,482 in England; 1,896 in Wales).
There are 7,193 Middle Layer SOAs (6,780 in England; 413 in Wales).
"Super" as in bigger. Do I win a prize, for being super geeky?
OK, thanks, I had to think about this quite hard but I think I now understand it. "Geographical unit" would be a better term for "output area", and "large geographical unit" for SOA - is that right?
But I still don't understand why areas are defined in terms of their outputs - and not their inputs, throughputs, put-downs, or whatever. Couldn't they more usefully be called "areas" or "localities" or even "towns" or something? Why is it their outputs that are measured; what is it that they put out - statistics? I guess that's it!
And you've also given me something intelligent to say too - next time someone tells me something about SOAs, I shall just ask casually whether that is lower layer SOAs or middle layer SOAs!
Thanks for the help!
Jeremy
Post a Comment