The Annual Population Survey (APS) is a combined

statistical survey Survey methodology is "the study of survey methods". As a field of applied statistics concentrating on human-research surveys, survey methodology studies the sampling of individual units from a population and associated techniques of survey d ...

of households in Great Britain which is conducted quarterly by the

Office for National Statistics The Office for National Statistics (ONS; ) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, UK Parliament. Overview The ONS is responsible fo ...

(ONS). It combines results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the English, Welsh and Scottish Labour Force Survey boosts which are funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the

Department for Work and Pensions The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for welfare spending, welfare, pensions and child maintenance ...

(DWP), the

Welsh Government The Welsh Government ( ) is the Executive (government), executive arm of the Welsh devolution, devolved government of Wales. The government consists of Cabinet secretary, cabinet secretaries and Minister of State, ministers. It is led by the F ...

and the

Scottish Government The Scottish Government (, ) is the executive arm of the devolved government of Scotland. It was formed in 1999 as the Scottish Executive following the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution, and is headquartered at St Andrew's House in ...

History

APS data was first published in July 2005, containing data collected between January and December 2004. Since then, APS data has been published quarterly but with each dataset relating to a whole year. Between January 2004 and December 2005, an additional sample boost, the APS boost, was introduced but then discontinued in 2006 due to a lack of funding. In 2007, the APS and the LFS data were reweighted by the ONS, now using population estimates for 2007–2008. The key feature of the APS is its emphasis on relatively small geographic areas, providing information on selected social and socio-economic variables between the 10-yearly censuses. Some of the topics included in the APS are, for example,

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

health Health has a variety of definitions, which have been used for different purposes over time. In general, it refers to physical and emotional well-being, especially that associated with normal functioning of the human body, absent of disease, p ...

employment Employment is a relationship between two party (law), parties Regulation, regulating the provision of paid Labour (human activity), labour services. Usually based on a employment contract, contract, one party, the employer, which might be a cor ...

and

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

Methodology and scope

The APS is published quarterly with each dataset containing 12 months of data. For each dataset, the sample size is approximately 170,000 households and 360,000 individuals.

Re-using the data

Users can obtain Annual Population Survey data from the UK Data Service website; certain data can also be accessed at the NOMIS website. The Labour Force Survey data service provides tables using APS data.

References

External links

Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) website

NOMIS, official labour market statistics website

Office for National Statistics (ONS) website
{{Census in the United Kingdom Censuses in the United Kingdom Demographics of the United Kingdom Household surveys Office for National Statistics Publications established in 2005