See also Getting the most from census data in the History
Section of Curriculum Support
Before using these tasks with children there are some preliminary activities that it
would be wise to undertake.
- Children should have an understanding of the nature of information gathering, storage
and retrieval.
- They should have had experience of gathering information from a range of sources
- They should have had experience of sorting and classifying information
- They should have had experience of entering and storing information in a database
- They should have had experience of retrieving information
- They should have had experience of interpreting, analysing and checking information
- Print off a few records to give to children so that they can become familiar with the
structure of the database and the nature of information stored.
- Discuss the vocabulary and syntax of the data so that children will find searching more
fruitful. They will quickly become frustrated if they are searching the correct fields but
are unable to make use of possible alternative keywords.
- Ensure the children are aware that the information has been collected over a period of
sixty years. The structure of the census form was necessarily refined over the time span
as the need for different information was identified. Thus in the early forms Place of
birth was recorded as Staffordshire or Not Staffordshire. As information
became more detailed an additional field was been added asking for Country/County of
birth. Sometimes children may need to search on both these fields to find the answers.
- Where questions require that data is sorted by size, for example "What is the first
name of the youngest servant?" Children will need to devise strategies to find the
answer.
It is not necessary to search on both fields at once - the search can be refined. So
they might choose to
- Search on Occupation for servant
- Show results as Age
This brings up a list of ages of servants. (The number in parentheses refers to the
record number in the database.) By glancing through this children can find the youngest.
It is worth pointing out that these records will not be displayed in ascending or
descending order, but by the census year.
Now they must refine the search.
- Search on Occupation for servant
- Search on Age for 13
- Show results as First name
Alternatively they may devise a different strategy. This should not be discouraged as
discussion can lead to children making decisions about the comparative efficiency of
different searches.