About this Resource

Linking Postcoded Neighbourhood Perception Survey with Other Geographies

- including census, health and neighbourhood statistics

Researcher	Researcher E
Discipline	Geography
Outputs	Linking postcoded neighbourhood perception survey data to census, health and neighbourhood statistics geographies
Study area	UK
Geographical units	Postcode; output area; ward; super output area; GOR; region; LAD; district
Time period	2005
Reference datasets	NSPD
	Summary
Main tasks	Researcher E had a set of postcode responses from a survey of people’s perceptions of neighbourhoods. He wanted to match the postcodes to a range of census, health and neighbourhood statistics geographies so that he could map the responses by the various geographical areas and also link social and economic variables from the census and neighbourhood statistics to his data. First, he checked that his postcodes were correctly formatted and attempted to remove or resolve any partially correct or incomplete postcodes. Then he created an input file (in simple comma delimited text file format) with the postcodes in the first column. He then used GeoConvert to match the postcodes to various geographies, which he was able to select from the GeoConvert interface. He was able to download and save the resultant output file and check for any unmatched postcodes which had been identified by the GeoConvert utility.
	Hints, Tips and References
Hints & Tips	The survey data of Researcher E were for 2005. GeoConvert currently only uses postcode directories from May 2006 onwards. This means that some of his 2005 postcodes may have been matched to the wrong geographical areas if the postcode was terminated and subsequently recycled to another location by May 2006. Researchers should always ensure that they use the directories which are closest to the time period of their study. In this case, a more accurate set of matched results could be obtained by downloading a 2005 version of the All Fields Postcode Directory (AFPD) from UKBORDERS and then using Access or similar software to manually match the postcodes to the relevant geographical areas. This would take longer but should provide a more accurate set of results.
References	GeoConvert - http://geoconvert.mimas.ac.uk