Defining distance thresholds for migration research

There exists a large body of research focused on migration distance, where migration is either the outcome of interest or used as an input variable to model something else. However, there is little consistency in the distance thresholds used: these are often arbitrary, based on administrative boundaries or constrained by definitions available in the dataset. This causes problems with comparison across studies, and in some cases where migration distance is poorly defined could lead to issues with interpretation of results. Using Binary Logistic Regression and drawing on data from the 2011 Census Sample of Anonymised Records for England and Wales, we demonstrate that the odds of migrating vary when considering a range of population characteristics across 16 distance thresholds. We argue that the choice of distance cut‐offs needs to be population and context specific and that decisions about these cut‐offs should be made carefully as part of the study design.