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Are we lonely? The More or Less alternative census

2011-04-01T07:00:03+00:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9441000/9441022.stm

The census is all well and good. (Unless you think it a gross violation of your privacy, of course, or a colossal waste of public money - as a programme about statistics, however, we on More or Less quite like it).

It will tell us how many we are, where we live, with whom, and more. Good, hard facts. But, we wondered, could we yield some surprising data by asking less obvious questions? Are we, for example, a selfish lot? Are we lonely? Do we think we have a better or worse quality of life than our parents had when they were our age?

The Government is increasingly interested in this softer stuff. The Office for National Statistics is developing a wellbeing index and will include questions on 'life satisfaction' in next month's household survey. Some hope a wellbeing index might one day rival GDP as a measure of national progress.

But there are no such questions in the 2011 census. That's why we have created our own.

While the ONS had 10 years and £482 million to throw at their census, we had a few days and no money to throw at ours. So we are not sampling the nation, but the Today and More or Less audiences. Even then, we're only sampling those who decide to fill in the form.

We will have to treat our findings with appropriate caution. But we do have some statistical tricks up our sleeve which - we hope - will allow us to discern something of interest. We are grateful to Peter Lynn, a professor of survey methodology at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University, for designing the questions with us.

The Other Census is open for two weeks from April 1. Tim Harford will present the results on Today and More or Less on April 22.

Richard Knight is Series Editor of More or Less

Listen to the first in the new series of More or Less on BBC Radio 4 at 1330 today and sign up for the free podcast.
Complete the More or Less other census on the Today web site.
There's a press release about the Household Survey on the ONS web site (PDF).
Peter Lynn's homepage on the University of Essex web site.
Picture by Aditya. Some rights reserved.

Doorstepping Hardeep Singh Kohli - the Alternative Census on Feedback

2011-03-03T19:27:05+00:00

Nine a.m. on a cold March day in North London. I knock on the door of a flat in a new tower block. When the door opens I'm straight in with my questions before the occupant can shut it in my face.

How long have you lived here? Are you on your own? Who else lives here? Emboldened by the fact that the door is still open, I press on.

How many times have you been in love? Do you remember your first kiss?

Hardeep Singh Kholi smiles at me with a weary tolerance.

I have of course come to talk to him about his Radio 4 series, Alternative Census, and have put to him the rather personal, not to say intimate, questions he has been asking of people in Liverpool and Mallaig, Merthyr Tydfil and Great Yarmouth among other places.

"Why do people reveal their private feelings and experiences in such a public manner" , I think in my stiff upper lip way. "Or am I just emotionally constipated?" (No comment required).

The series has received great praise from Feedback listeners who feel they are hearing fresh voices which are often absent from network radio.

They are also very complimentary about Hardeep's gentle probing which elicits such fascinating revelations. The series was, of course, commissioned before the latest BBC Trust review of Radio 4 which encouraged the network to redouble its efforts to attract audiences from outside the M25 and from minorities. Hardeep's Alternative Census must be right up their street.

Once I had got past HSK's front door into his kitchen we sat down for a proper conversation. Here is an extract.

By the way, in a couple of weeks I'll be talking to Andy Parfitt the Head of Radio 1, and shortly afterwards to the outgoing Chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons.

If you have any questions you'd like me to ask them, please send them to feedback@bbc.co.uk.

We read, learn, and inwardly digest, all your emails.

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

Listen to episode two of Hardeep's Alternative Census on the Radio 4 web site. Episode three is on Radio 4 next Friday at 1100.
Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.
The picture shows Hardeep with one of his subjects Sylvia Singer. More pics here.

How many times have you been in love? A kind of census

2011-02-25T10:40:36+00:00

Did you know why Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not Galilee? A kind of census required Joseph and Mary to be in Bethlehem around Christmas a couple of millennia ago. Fascinating. One wonders the Fate of Christianity had there not been a census.

I'm not pretending my alternative census will have any sort of impact similar to that of the coming of Jesus Christ; but nonetheless, it has had a profound impact on me and hopefully this will be shared by listeners.

I love interviewing people. I enjoy the mandate a microphone gives me to delve and duck around people's lives and experiences, stories shared, insight elicited. I never cease to be surprised at how the most tightly structured interview soon unravels into a glorified chat as my producer rolls her eyes knowing she has to wade through the material and attempt to make me sound like I might know what I'm talking about.

And radio affords a greater intimacy than any other medium: the power of the voice, the power of the pause seem somehow amplified on the wireless.

Yet taking the census questions as my starting point I soon became aware of their directness, their lack of tact. Epithets were superfluous in the attempt to quantify the state of the nation. A seemingly innocuous question like "who lives here normally" followed by "who will be staying here tonight" felt like the most personal of intrusions. And one thing I was taught as a young lad in Glasgow is to never discuss Religion and Politics. This caveat would have made the radio 4 census gathering project anodyne in the extreme. People's lives are politics and religion. They're crucial to creating some sort of portrait of the nations we call a United Kingdom.

Luckily my license was poetic enough to throw in a few cheekier, non official Census questions. "How many times have you been in love? Do you remember your first kiss? When were you at your happiest?" I'll never tire of the moment these questions were posed and were invariably followed by a smile, a pause, an intake of breath or some combination of all three!

My over-riding sense of my experiences making this series is how normal and simultaneously surprising we are as a country. And also, how friendly and trusting and giving we are. I felt genuinely buoyed by the people I met, both the set-up interviews and those whose doors we stepped.

There is much generosity of spirit, much kindness and a great sense of community out there, regardless of who lives in what sort of house and who they first kissed.

Hardeep Singh Kohli presents his Alternative Census on BBC Radio 4

The picture shows Hardeep with Barbara and Derek Brown. There are more pictures here.
Listen to the first of the new series at 1100 today and on the Radio 4 web site for seven days after that.