ONS has been working in collaboration with The Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), who funded the work, to make available Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) from the 2001 Census for research purposes.

The last of these samples, the Small Area Microdata (SAM) is now available from CCSR (a charge may apply). Like the other SARs products, this file is suitable for use with statistical software packages such as SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and STATA (Statistical Software for Professionals).

This is the first time a 5 per cent sample at local authority level has been made available. It is the largest microdata sample from the Census available to researchers, containing 2.9 million individual records. The variables included are similar to those in the Individual SAR (Licensed), though broader banding has been used to preserve individuals' confidentiality.

For more information on all the SARs products, and to register for access, training and guidance, please go to www.ccsr.ac.uk/sars/2001/. Information about ONS microdata services can be found HERE.

This page last revised: 25 May 2006