Administrative Based Population Estimates, Household, and Ethnicity Estimates (2016-2022) - Statement of voluntary compliance

Voluntary Statement of Compliance

This statement shows how the National Records of Scotland (NRS) have followed the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics in the production and release of the Administrative Data Based Population, Household and Ethnicity Estimates (2016–2022): Statistical Research  publication.

 NRS is committed to adhering to the highest standards of analysis. While NRS does produce a range of Official Statistics, the findings in the Administrative Data Based Population, Household and Ethnicity Estimates (2016–2022) are not considered Official Statistics. Instead, this is considered ‘Statistical Research’, a term used to refer to work at an early stage of development and therefore not meet the requirements of Official Statistics or Official Statistics in Development.

 One of the main reasons for publishing these statistics as statistical research is to support discussions with data suppliers and stakeholders on the application of this work. We have engaged with stakeholders on the administrative estimates, and included their feedback in our development of the methodology.  We will continue to work with stakeholders to gain their feedback on outputs produced and methodology developments for administrative data based estimates and to inform future developments.

Although not Official Statistics, this work has voluntarily adopted the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics and complies as much as possible, which is why we have applied to be Voluntary Adopters of the Code of Practice for this release.  

The Code of Practice for Statistics has three pillars:

• Trustworthiness
• Quality
• Value

NRS also publish the National Statistics on Mid-Year Population Estimates. This is the publication that users should refer to when they require population figures for Scotland.

Trustworthiness – trusted people, systems and processes

NRS is a Non-Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government and as such is accountable to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture and ultimately to the Scottish Parliament.

NRS has recruited professional statisticians who are part of the Scottish Government Statistician Professional Group and the Government Statistical Service (GSS). As part of the GSS individuals undertake a commitment to maintain professional standards and participate in continuous professional development.

They have a professional line of accountability to the Head of Profession for Statistics in NRS and to the Chief Statistician for the Scottish Government who has a professional line of accountability to the National Statistician.

There have been improvements to the methodologies since the previous publication in August 2023. These changes have been set out in our publication. Updates to methodologies have been peer reviewed and are compared with similar work completed by other UK statistical organisations.

Data governance is a critical part of this project. A Data-Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) has been published on the NRS website since 2019, to allow data users to see progress for this project. This DPIA sets out how best practice is followed for the storage, transmission access and analysis of personal data. It also includes information on our stakeholder engagement for the project over the period. The DPIA is reviewed on a yearly basis.

NRS has, and will continue to, pre-announce the dates of forthcoming statistical research papers on administrative data based population estimates. This report was pre-announced 4 weeks prior to publication on NRS’s Forthcoming Publication calendar.

Quality - Robust data, methods and processes

The administrative data that is used in this publication undergoes rigorous checks at source from the data providers. Once the data has been received by NRS the data sources are assessed by statisticians for their accuracy, reliability, quality and suitability for use in this project. A summary Quality Assurance of Administrative Datasets (QAAD) is compiled by statisticians at NRS for each dataset and agreed with the data provider for accuracy. This project has regularly published these QAAD documents and will continue to do so.

We have consulted the Demography Team in NRS who produce the National Statistics for mid-year population estimates in Scotland as part of the quality assurance process. The Demography Team are the topic experts on population estimates within NRS.

NRS has had discussions with stakeholders on the strengths and limitations of the data used and the underpinning methodology. NRS will continue to have these discussions based on the updated population estimates. This will help to continue to identify areas for improvement in the methodology and additional datasets that could improve the quality of the outputs.

Value – efficiency, proportionality and accessibility

This project of work would allow critical demographic statistics to be produced more often, more accurately and best targeted to meet user needs. NRS is working regularly with other UK statistical organisation on equivalent programmes of work to ensure the work provides maximum value and aligns to user needs.

NRS has engaged regularly with users on this work, presenting at events and conferences on the new methodologies and explaining how administrative data was used during the 2022 Census to produce demographic estimates. NRS has planned an ongoing programme of user engagement in 2025 and this feedback will continue to inform the direction of this project.

The efficiency and proportionality of these administrative estimates lies in that no bespoke data collection is required, instead using existing data sources to produce demographic estimates with an innovative methodology.

All information relating to this publication is accessible on the NRS website. Given the nature of these statistics and the methodology used to create them, a high level summary of methodology is included in the main report. More detailed methodology reports are available on the website alongside previous publications which provides additional detail on linkage and analysis.