Engagement methods
Community profiling
Community profiling helps to gain a better understanding of local communities. This section of the guide describes a number of useful approaches, such as the analysis of routinely available data, and more qualitative approaches.
Government Departments collate large volumes of information about local areas through surveys (for example the Labour Force Survey or the British Crime Survey), the Census, or other statistical measures (such as health data, crime statistics, educational information, etc.).
Most of this data can be found on government websites and downloaded at no cost. This means for the standard geographical units used by government; typically these are either local authority areas, or for smaller area analysis, wards or postcode sectors consisting of around 2,000 households. If you have no access within your own organisation to local profiling data sets (in most organisations this service is known as "geodemographic information system" or GIS), or if you are looking for quick access to data, please go to the section on the Census and similar national data sources.
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