Population and Society

Our Population and Society domain covers statistics on the size and geographic spread of the population, on the factors driving population change (including births, deaths and migration), and on people’s lifestyles and culture, including sport, language, and identity.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted how important it is to understand how we are living and engaging in UK society. We want to uphold public confidence in the data and statistics that we cover, particularly at this time.

We are monitoring statistics relating to COVID-19, working with producers to ensure the statistics meet the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics, and responding to users queries and concerns on statistical matters. For more information on OSR’s work during the period of the pandemic, visit our dedicated COVID-19 page.

Our key priorities are to work to make sure that data and statistics are of sufficient quality and value to reliably support public debate and inform decision making for a wide range of stakeholders. We will aim to do this through looking at how statistics and data serve as evidence for understanding key life events and personal wellbeing, including issues of loneliness and social isolation. We will continue our assessment of the 2021 Censuses and our ongoing engagement with producers on developments and transformations to migration statistics and population estimates and projections. We will continue our engagement on the review of the DCMS sector definitions. We will also be looking at the equality and inclusion agenda, in line with wider organisational aims.

We have been working on a compliance check for the Scottish Household survey to cover two perspectives. The first is the introduction of a gender identity question to the survey in 2018 and the second is the more recent move from face-to-face interviews to an alternative means of collection given the COVID-19 pandemic. We had planned to publish the outcome of both reviews in April 2022 however we have faced some minor delays. We are working to get the outcome of our work finalised at the earliest opportunity.

We always welcome hearing from users of statistics about your experiences, your data needs and how data and statistics can be improved. If you would like to speak to us, please get in touch: Marie McGhee, Siobhan Tuohy-Smith, Ewan Partington and Emma Harrison.

Planned Work

Published Correspondence – Population and society domain

Publications – Population and society domain