Census 2016 Place of Work, School or College - Census of Anonymised Records (POWSCAR)

Census 2016

A Census of Population was taken on the night of Sunday, 24 April 2016, in accordance with the Statistics Act 1993 and the Statistics (Census of Population) Order 2015 (S.I. No. 445 of 2015).  The Statistics (Census of Population) Order 2015 was made by An Taoiseach in pursuance of powers conferred on him by section 25 (1) of the Statistics Act 1993 (No. 21 of 1993). A link to the census questionnaire is available at 2016 Census Forms.

Coverage of the Census

The census figures relate to the de facto population i.e. the population recorded for each area represents the total of all persons present within its boundaries on the night of Sunday, 24 April 2016, together with all persons who arrived in that area on the morning of Monday, 25 April 2016, not having been enumerated elsewhere.  Persons on board ships in port are included with the population of adjacent areas. The figures, therefore, include visitors present on Census Night as well as those in residence, while usual residents temporarily absent from the area are excluded.

The date of the census was chosen to coincide with a period when passenger movements were at a minimum and, consequently, the figures closely approximate to those for the normally resident population. Members of the Defence Forces who, on Census Night, were serving abroad with the United Nations were excluded from the enumeration.

Conduct of the Census

A temporary field force consisting of 6 Census Liaison Officers, 44 Regional Supervisors, 430 Field Supervisors and some 4,663 part-time Enumerators carried out the census enumeration. During the four weeks before Census Night the enumerators entered details in respect of 2 million private residences and communal establishments in their enumerator record books. They simultaneously delivered blank census questionnaires to 1.7 million of these dwellings that were expected to be occupied on Census Night. Approximately 250,000 residences were vacant at the time of the census, while in the remaining cases the household was either enumerated elsewhere or temporarily absent from the State. The collection of completed questionnaires took place between Monday 25 April and Sunday 22 May, 2016.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) wishes to record its appreciation of the public-spirited co-operation received from households and the dedication and commitment displayed by the census field force.

Production of Results

Each enumerator first prepared and returned to the CSO a summary of the population of his/her enumeration area. These summaries formed the basis for the preliminary 2016 census results published in July 2016. The completed questionnaires for individual households were subsequently transported to the CSO for processing. The population summaries, dwelling listings and enumeration maps for individual enumeration areas were checked for consistency and used to determine the boundaries of census towns and suburbs. The capture and processing of the responses to questions on the questionnaires proceeded concurrently. 

Place of Work, School or College Census of Anonymised Records (POWSCAR)

Anonymised census records relating to persons at work and students who were enumerated and usually resident in Ireland are available to bona fide researchers for the purposes of research on commuting patterns etc. Where the application is granted the researcher will be signed up as an Officer of Statistics.  POWSCAR is described in Sections 2 and 3.

Application to Use 2016 POWSCAR

POWSCAR data is only available to bona fide researchers who are approved by CSO and signed up as Officers of Statistics. All appointments as an Officer of Statistics are for one year. Should the research require, a new application can be made for additional period(s) of one year. All material proposed for publication which has been derived from POWSCAR must be approved in advance by CSO.

Application to access POWSCAR microdata must be made using the microdata application forms on the CSO Researcher Online System for Applications (ROSA) where details on the Research Microdata File (RMF) Policies are also available.

Where the application is approved, all researchers accessing the data will be required to sign a declaration making them Officers of Statistics under the Statistics Act 1993, agreeing to be bound by the confidentiality provisions of the Act. There are severe penalties under the Act for divulging confidential data.

Contact Details

For further information on the data content, please contact:

Census Enquiries Section
Central Statistics Office
Swords Business Campus
Balheary Road
Swords
Co. Dublin

Phone: (+353) 1 895 1300
E-mail: census@cso.ie
www.cso.ie

For further Researcher Online System for Applications (ROSA) or maps, please contact:

Researcher Coordination Unit
Central Statistics Office
Ardee Road
Rathmines
Dublin 6

Email: rcu@cso.ie
www.cso.ie

For further information on Digital Boundaries or maps, please contact:

Tailte Éireann Surveying (Public Office)
Phoenix Park
Dublin 8
D08 F6E4

Phone: (+353) 1 802 5300
https://www.tailte.ie/ or https://osi.ie/contact-us/

POWSCAR Scope

The Place of Work, School or College Census of Anonymised Records cover persons who were enumerated and usually resident in Ireland on Census Night. Persons enumerated in both private dwellings and communal establishments were included. The file specifically excludes visitors who indicated they were usually resident elsewhere abroad in Question 7 on the census form.

The category student covers persons aged 5 to 14 and persons aged 15 and over who indicated they were students by ticking box 4 on Question 27 on the census form which requests the person’s present principal status.

Census 2016 Question 27

Place of Work, School or College Coding

The location of the Place of Work, School or College was coded for each person on the basis of the reply to Question 34.

Census 2016 Question 34

Where the person ticked box 1 or 2 on Question 34 the place of work, school or college was automatically defaulted to W/M (W=Works mainly at or from home; M=No fixed place of work). Otherwise the employer/school name and address was matched against addresses on the An Post GeoDirectory. In the case of workers, where the coder could not find an exact match they coded to a near match, if they could find a GeoDirectory address on the same street or in the same town as the address stated on the form. In the case of students, an exact match was only accepted for the school or college address. The Irish National Grid matched from the GeoDirectory were linked back to the place of work, school or college Electoral District (ED) and Town and Small Area by superimposing digital boundaries.

In 2016, places of work, school or college with an address in Northern Ireland were coded in the same way using the Pointer database. Where the person indicated a work, school or college address abroad these records were coded to a specific code to indicate that the person was working abroad i.e. outside Ireland or Northern Ireland.

Anonymisation and recoding

The coded records relating to persons within households were anonymised by stripping off all identifiable information such as household number, person number within the household and by re-coding variables where the number of categories could lead to the identification of an individual when combined with other information on the record.

POWSCAR Structure and Content

Table 1 gives details of the variables in the microdata file and how they are classified.
The Place of Work, School or College Census data file IE_COP_Place_Of_Work_School_2016.txt is a TAB delimited text file in the format outlined in Table 1. Note that the first record of this file contains the variable names as indicated.
POWSCAR_2016_Codes.xlsx contains a worksheet for each variable which links the variable values and their associated labels.
For persons who were usually resident in Ireland on Census Night but were enumerated away from their home, it is not possible to produce household or family characteristics. In this case, the variable will be populated with a “U” for unknown.

Data minimisation

A new European regulation on data protection, the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council), comes into force in Ireland in May 2018. This regulation puts stringent requirements on data processing organisations such as the CSO to protect the personal data of individuals and undertakings. One of the principles of the GDPR is data minimisation which specifies that personal data should be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed.

¹ Missing numeric values are represented with a “-“ in the file. Character values not applicable are represented with a “-“ in the file.