Guides

This guide gives practical advice and guidance to people who need to present data – in tables, charts, maps or text. The guide:

• is useful for anyone who needs help to understand or to present (also known as disseminate) data
• describes the most common ways of presenting data
• gives examples of how to present data in order to provide messages to specific audiences.

This guide gives practical advice and guidance to people who need to summarise data and provide easy to understand statistics. The guide:

• is useful for anyone who needs help to understand or interpret summary statistics
• describes the most common statistical measures
• illustrates how they can be calculated
• explains how the statistics can be interpreted
• gives examples of when each statistical measure should be used.

This guide gives practical advice and guidance to people who need to prepare, produce and design surveys and analyse the resulting data. The guide:

• is also useful for anyone who needs help to understand survey design
• describes the most common sampling techniques and how to calculate them
• outlines how to construct questions
• explains how to pilot a survey and disseminate results.

This guide gives practical advice and guidance, to anyone who wants an overview of why, how and when you might organise and run a focus group to support your work. The guide:

• explains what focus groups are, their purpose, and why and when to use them
• outlines the key elements needed to prepare effective focus groups
• describes how to plan a focus group
• outlines selecting participants and securing participation; including ways to support hard to reach participants
• explains delivering a focus group – from beginning to end.

This guide gives practical advice and guidance to anyone who wants an introduction to, or a refresh of, the basic principles of understanding and using data. The guide:

• outlines why data is important
• explains what data is and how to find it
• provides key questions for you to consider that will help you understand your data
• outlines techniques for using data

This guide gives practical advice and guidance, to anyone who wants to build their skills and confidence in understanding, challenging and using performance data. The guide:

• outlines what performance data is
• explains the different types of performance data you are likely to come across, and how to identify them
• provides key questions for you to consider to help you understand your performance data
• walks you through how to put theory into practice and move from performance measurement to performance management.

This guide gives information to help you understand and use data from the 2021 Census.

This guide provides an overview of the most common geographic classifications, including coverage, publisher, frequency of updates etc.