Guidance

FAQs and information about the Community Life Survey

Updated 21 July 2015

© Crown copyright 2015

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/faqs-for-the-community-life-survey-and-supporting-documents/faqs-and-information-about-the-community-life-survey

1. FAQs

Q. What is the Community Life Survey?

The Community Life Survey is a major survey of adults in England, aiming to track the latest trends and developments across areas that are key to encouraging social action and empowering communities. The objectives of the survey are to:

  • provide robust, nationally representative data on behaviours and attitudes within communities to inform and direct policy and action in these areas
  • provide data of value to all users, including public bodies, external stakeholders and the public, engaging with end users to refine and develop the survey as appropriate, and
  • underpin further research and debate on building stronger communities

The Community Life Survey forms Official Statistics, meaning that it meets the high standards of quality set out by the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. See the supporting documents for further information.

Q. What does this survey measure?

The Community Life Survey tracks measures that are key to understanding our society and local communities, including:

  • volunteering and charitable giving
  • views about the local area
  • community cohesion and belonging
  • community empowerment and participation
  • influencing local decisions and affairs
  • subjective well-being

View the 2014 to 2015 questionnaire.

Q. Who is carrying out this survey?

TNS BMRB, an independent research organisation, carried out the survey on behalf of Cabinet Office in 2012 to 2013, 2013 to 2014, 2014 to 2015 and 2015 to 2016.

Q. How are the data for this survey gathered?

The 2012 to 2013 survey was carried out via face-to-face interviews (approximately 30 minutes in length), with participants recruited via random probability sampling.

Data were collected from adults (aged 16+) in England via a continuous design, which allowed for headline findings to be published on a quarterly basis throughout the 2012 to 2013 survey year.

The survey was carried out in the same way in 2013 to 2014 and 2014 to 2015 but publication was moved to an annual cycle. In addition, web based survey experiments have been conducted to further explore online methodologies for data collection.

Q. What is the sample size for the core survey?

The sample size for 2012 to 2013 was 2,200 interviews per quarter, which equates to 6,600 interviews in the 2012 to 2013 survey year (as data collection commenced in Quarter 2 of 2012 to 2013).

The sample size for 2013 to 2014 was 5,000 face-to-face interviews (1,250 per quarter).

The sample size for 2014 to 2015 was 2,000 face-to-face interviews (approximately 667 per quarter).

Q. What geographical area does the survey cover?

This survey covers England only.

Q. When are results available?

Headline findings from the 2014 to 2015 Community Life Survey will be published at 9:30am, 21 July 2015. This will include a statistical release and table datasets for the face-to-face survey.

Underlying anonymised data for 2014 to 2015 will be available to download through the University of Essex Data Archive in autumn 2015.

Following initial consultation, the decision was taken to move to annual reporting in 2013 to 2014, given the limited change in estimates on a quarterly basis.

Headline findings from the 2013 to 2014 Community Life Survey were published at 9:30am, 22 July 2014, whilst findings from the 2012 to 2013 Community Life survey were published on a quarterly basis, with the final release at 9.30am, 19 July 2013.

Underlying anonymised data for the full survey year 2013 to 2014 and 2012 to 2013 are available to download through the University of Essex Data Archive.

Q. Will findings be comparable to Citizenship Survey?

The Community Life Survey incorporates a small number of priority measures from the Citizenship Survey in order that trends in these issues can continue to be tracked over time. For these measures the face-to-face survey findings will be comparable to the Citizenship Survey findings.

All data publications indicate clearly where comparisons between the datasets are valid.

Q. How was the web experiment designed and carried out?

In order to test the viability of moving to a fully online approach and ensure more cost and time efficient data collection, 8,000 web based interviews were conducted in 2013 to 2014 (2,000 per quarter). A full consultation was issued to outline the detail behind this testing and gather views of users on this approach.

A further 2,000 web based interviews were conducted in 2014 to 2015 (667 per quarter, as data collection commenced in Quarter 2 2014 to 2015).

Results from the 2014 to 2015 web survey will be published in due course, as part of the publication of the technical report.

We have also been carrying out further experiments to understand differences between the face-to-face and web surveys. A full write-up will be published in autumn 2015.

Q. Who can I contact for further information?

If you have further queries or comments about the survey, please email: [email protected]

Or write to:

The Community Life Survey team
Cabinet Office
1 Horse Guards Road
SW1A 2HQ

2. User engagement

The Cabinet Office invited views on the proposed future approach for the Community Life Survey, issuing the below consultation. It ran for around 12 weeks, closing on Friday 14 February 2014:

3. Information about Official Statistics

Cabinet Office produced ‘Official Statistics’ are governed by the standards set out by the UK Statistics Authority in their Code of Practice for Official Statistics. This is intended to ensure that all Official Statistics meet the needs of users; and that the statistics are produced, managed and disseminated to high standards, and explained well.

Currently the only Official Statistics publication produced by the Cabinet Office is the Community Life Survey.

Further information on how we will produce our statistics, and how we will ensure that we comply with the standards set out in the Code of Practice, is contained in the links below:

  • statement on compliance on pre-release access
  • revisions policy
  • user engagement
  • protecting confidential data
  • quality guidelines (pdf)
  • statement on administrative sources (pdf)

Cabinet Office does not have any exceptions or exemptions to the application of the Code of Practice, or to the principle of protecting confidential data.

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