How can we better understand internal migration?
Ernsten, A., McCollum, D., Feng, Z., Everington, D. & Huang, Z. (2017) UK Administrative Data Research Network Annual Research Conference, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, UK, 1 - 2 June 2017 [SLS]
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Abstract:
Understanding migration behaviour is an essential part of understanding population change. Internal migration, although at least as important as international migration from academic and policy perspectives, has been less researched.
Recently the census based Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) has been extended to include postcode data from NHS Scotland. The SLS is a 5.3% sample of the Scottish population and is rich in attributes but the census is only repeated once every ten years. The data provided from NHS Scotland, however, covers very limited attributes but is rich timewise. NHS-data at postcode level is recently available through the SLS and this gives a unique and new opportunity to develop these data for longitudinal research.
The linkage of these data sources creates the potential to, for the first time, undertake an in-depth analysis of the mobility patterns of a sizeable cohort of individuals within Scotland, at detailed geographies and over a considerable period of time (2001-2011).
This paper will discuss the combination of health administrative data linked to the census based Scottish Longitudinal Study, which creates a new and unique way to study internal migration in Scotland. In our paper we evaluate the quality of this new data. By means of logistic regressions, we evaluated what movers and types of moves are under and over represented when combining these data sources. Finally, potential solutions to improve under/over representation in those groups are presented.
