2011 census form peek

[FosseWay]

I guess in 100 years time family historians won't be so reliant on the census returns as we are to find out town of birth  as more records will be available to them.

Carole

Unfortunately, although there are potentially more records today which could be available many of them are destroyed.

Also, the most obvious source of PoB is the birth index, but this only gives the registration district, not the town. In sparsely populated areas one RD can cover a lot of places. This is one major advantage of the UK censuses over the US/Canadian ones: the former generally give parish (or smaller unit) of birth in rural areas, and town elsewhere, while the North American ones just give state or province.

[nigelp]

Also, the most obvious source of PoB is the birth index, but this only gives the registration district, not the town. In sparsely populated areas one RD can cover a lot of places. This is one major advantage of the UK censuses over the US/Canadian ones: the former generally give parish (or smaller unit) of birth in rural areas, and town elsewhere, while the North American ones just give state or province.

Although the GRO index will provide this information (assuming it is publicly available in the future) you do, of course, need to know where to start looking in the index. If, for example, you have an Ann Smith in the 2011 Census, indicated only as born in England, where do you start? There are too many possibilities for an Ann Smith.

Nigel

[Siamese Girl]

I'm really imagining that in 100 years time family historians will have other ways of gathering information than sitting in front of a computer in their spare rooms looking through the GRO indexes and trying to decide which Ann Smith is the one they are looking for - technology will have moved on so much in that time. Think how much life has changed in the last 100 years.

That is supposing that there will be a 100 year closure on the census.

Carole

[nigelp]

The means for looking at records will no doubt change significantly in the next 100 years. However, the next 100 years won't alter the information that is collected in 2011. Today we are looking at the same 19th, 18th etc century records as our ancestors would have looked at in 1911 (except that some have been destroyed or lost) although we can now search for them more easily and look at them on a computer, in a Records Office etc.

Nigel

[Paul Caswell]

I must say it concerns me a little that we are not asking for a place of birth. It MUST be a valuable metric. Every previous census asked for it to some extent.

Nowadays we generate huge volumes of easily recordable digital data in our daily natural lives merely by existing in a technological world. I hope we do not fall into the complacency trap of assuming that that data will be recorded for posterity. Many opinions suggest that this data should, by default, NOT be recorded.

Paul

[mommabear]

I suppose we could all lie just as some of our ancestors have and no one would be any the wiser untill another 100 years.
If your memory is a bit dodgy too there is room for error.
I dont own a passport which is one of the questions too.

[nigelp]

Does anyone know why Question 17 (page 8 ) has been included? 

http://www.celsius.lshtm.ac.uk/modules/forms/census2011.pdf

Nigel

[carol8353]

Cos they were goign to ask some other daft question,but then thought better of it? 

[millymcb]

It is a question that appears on the welsh one (I think it is possibly about welsh language speaking) but not in england but to keep the numbers for the questions the same they have left it in but blank!  Nothing sinister

Milly