The methodology for the construction of these areas has varied over time but in the last few censuses a fundamental objective has been to try and maximise consistency both across space and over time – the Output Area (and its equivalents) now provide the basic geographical unit for describing areal characteristics and are the ‘building block’ against which all higher geography types are derived.
Provide a convenient mechanism by which indonesia rcs data new geographies can be constructed via aggregation, whilst at the same time allowing for flexibility in comparing areas and their changes over time – one of the outstanding features of UK geography (not just census geography), is its mutability over time which complicates temporal analyses.
A range of techniques have been proposed to try and counter the comparability problems that changing geographies present to analysts, from grid count based solutions to dasymetric and cartogram mapping techniques. In any case, cross comparison between censuses remains an ongoing topic of research and any intercensal analysis must account for the fact that UK census geography and the definition of ‘small areas’ has varied over time and represents as much a convenience mechanism for conducting the census as for definitively expressing geographical variation across space in a consistent and time comparable way.