It’s little more than a year before the next census will collect comprehensive data about life in modern Wales. Ian Cope examines the significance of the census and the details of the preparations for 2011 – when participants will be able to record their national identity as Welsh for the first time

MANY of us watched the moving scene in BBC Wales’ current Coming Home series in which Gabby Logan was reduced to tears as she learnt how her Cardiff great-great grandmother saw her husband and two children die in poverty.

Anyone who’s seen the programme or others like it, or who has indeed attempted to trace their own family tree, will have seen for themselves how much historians rely on census data.

Fascinating and often poignant as this data can be, the purpose of this 10-yearly census of population for England and Wales – first conducted in 1801 – wasn’t for us to be able look to the past, but to help shape the future.

The first census asked just six questions and for the first time provided accurate knowledge of the size of the population.

Since then, governments have used census data to learn more about us – how many of us there are, what we do and what we need – in order to help them make decisions about funding and plan services and facilities such as transport, schools, housing and so on.

Over the years, census questions have naturally been added, omitted and amended in response to user demand and to reflect changes in society.

However, basic inquiries about the make-up of households, employment, living and travel arrangements, health and religion have remained as those most useful to the national and local governments whose resulting decisions affect us all.

The most notable of developments by far for the 2011 census in Wales is that, for the first time ever, residents in Wales (and indeed in England) will be able to record that their national identity is Welsh if they wish to.

The 2011 census will soon be here and residents in Anglesey responded very positively to their invitation to take part in a full dress rehearsal of census operations this autumn.

Anglesey was chosen because of its rural nature, its high proportion of Welsh-speakers and its many communal establishments, like its RAF base and care homes.

The rehearsal allowed the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to test all its processes and procedures.

The 2011 census will be the first to go online so procedures for online questionnaires, online staff recruitment, and online help – all of which will be available in both English and Welsh – needed to be thoroughly tested.

In addition to the rehearsal, waves of consultation, research, testing and review for the next census have been going on since as early as 2005.

Census content often attracts political and media attention.

However, far from complaining about the length of the forms or nature of the questions, those who use census data have been calling for the census to collect more information in order to fine-tune their spending and planning decisions.

User needs, available space, budgets and privacy implications have always dictated that each question must be comprehensively tested and developed before it can be included in ONS’s recommended questions.

Residents in Wales may not be aware of the historical changes which have taken place over the past decade in the way in which the Welsh census is planned and implemented.

Devolution in 1999 was achieved towards the end of the 2001 questionnaire development process.

By the time planning commenced for the 2011 census in Wales, the National Assembly had long since been established and was able to have a greater say in census operations in Wales.

For 2011, the National Assembly won the right to be consulted on the content of the census order and it will make the 2011 census regulations for Wales.

ONS launched a census content consultation in 2005 in which over 330 topic responses were submitted by 28 different Welsh organisations including the Assembly Government, local authorities and the police.

A large proportion of these responses related to ethnicity, the Welsh language and national identity (the inclusion of a Welsh tick-box).

Since 1891, residents in Wales have been asked about their Welsh-language proficiency, and arrangements have been made from as early as 1841 for providing Welsh language translations of the census household questionnaire.

In 2011, residents in Wales will receive both English and Welsh- language versions of the questionnaire, and Welsh-speakers will, as before, be able to declare their Welsh-language proficiency.

They may also be interested to know that, for the first time, the Welsh and English-language census questionnaires are being developed in parallel using the “dual development” technique used for the New Zealand and Canada censuses (which are created in English and Maori and French respectively).

The aim of this pioneering method is to create two equally valid versions of the questionnaire, so that the Welsh questionnaire will not be a flat translation of the English version.

ONS will continue to work closely with the Assembly Government and the Welsh Language Board on all issues relating to the people and languages of Wales.

Census data is archived securely for 100 years; the records we capture in 2011 will fascinate and delight our descendants in 2112 and beyond.

Ian Cope is deputy director of 2011 census operations for England and Wales