Exploring and validating a commercial lifestyle survey for its use in the analysis of population migration

At a time when the future of the traditional population census in the United Kingdom is uncertain, increasing attention is being paid to the availability of data on geo-social processes, such as population migration, from alternative and less familar administrative and survey sources. In this paper, we report on research using data which provides some valuable information about migration behaviour in connection with other demographic and lifestyle characteristics obtained from several large geo-referenced cross-sectional annual sample surveys of the British population originating from the commercial sector. In particular, the paper uses a method of sample weighting to compensate for potential biases related to unequal probabilities of selection. The findings suggest, however, that the unweighted commercial microdata can be reassuringly used in migration modelling to give reliable estimates of associational patterns of key demographic, socio-economic and behavioural/lifestyle characteristics.