| Popis: |
A tension exists between making data available which protects the confidentiality of individuals while containing sufficiently detailed geographic information to underpin the utility of research. We test this by investigating the interplay between two geographical entities (points for the observations and polygons for area attributes) at a variety of scales, using a synthetic population of 22,000 people. We do this for individuals located by postcodes and by postal sector and postal district centroids and link these to a variety of census geographies. We also ‘jitter’ postcode coordinates to test the effect of moving people away from their original location. We find a smoothing of relationships up the geographical hierarchy. However, if postal sector centroids are used to locate individuals, linkages to Lower / Medium Super Output Area scales and subsequent results are very similar to the more detailed unit postcodes. Postcode locations jittered by up to 500 metres in any direction are likely to allow the same conclusions to be drawn as for the original locations. |
