Duke-Williams, O. (2015) British Society for Population Studies, Univ of Leeds, UK, 7 - 9 September 2015 [ONS LS]

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Abstract:

This paper reports the findings of an LS Beta test project, which used the ONS Longitudinal Study to explore some of the new variables in the 2011 Census. These included questions directed at those born outside the UK, such as the year and month of entry to the UK and the length of intended stay in the UK; and questions about main language used and language proficiency. Comparisons of the results of the question on year of entry to the UK can be made with other sources to test reliability and possible recall error: entry to the NHS, one-year migration questions in each separate Census, and a similar question asked in 1971. These are well correlated suggesting that the question response was robust. Analysis on the month of entry shows clustering in more recent years that may be related to student migrants. Whilst a relatively small set of languages provide the main language used by a large majority of respondents, there is a long tail of other languages also used. Combination of the main language question with the year of entry results shows clear patterns of different periods of entry by different language speakers. Indication of a 'main' language other than English does not necessarily mean that English proficiency is poor; one aspect that is of interest that is explored by this paper is the case of households where no adults use English as a main language, but the household contains at least one child that is an English speaker.

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Output from project: 04010096