Learn how to apply OAC

A one day OACUG course on 12 June 2008 provided hands-on training on how
to apply OAC. It was attended both by people starting to use area
classifications and by those wanting a refresher. It met a need
identified by Group members and will be run again.
Please contact Martin Robson by email on martin.robson@lbhf.gov.uk if you are interested in attending a repeat.

Getting Value out of OAC – course notification.

A hands-on training course on how to use and get value from the Office of National Statistics geodemographic Output Area Classification (OAC), now freely available in the public domain, is offered to OAC User Group members.

The courses will be run by Martin Callingham, Visiting Professor at the School of Geography, Birkbeck College, London University.

The first one day course was held at the Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol Street, EC1Y 8LX on Thursday 12 June 2008. It was being arranged in conjunction with the RSS Statistics Users Forum (SUF), to which the User Group is affiliated.

The usual fee for the course would be £250, but after further discussions with the RSS, a discount of 50% is now offered to those on the OACUG mailing list (which can be joined before booking ‘joining the group’), which brings it down to £125 – no VAT charged – and any surplus income will go to help SUF.

Hands-on training

A limit of ten places will allow an intensive and practical approach. Participants will be asked to bring a laptop with Excel and Access installed (an alternative to Access would be SPSS or some other software which will enable records from separate files to be joined through a common variable). It would also be an advantage if participants had a GIS installed, together with the Census Output Area (OA) boundary files. Participants would also be encouraged to bring their own postcoded data files, though this is not a necessary requirement.

The training will cover all the basic requirements of the software to achieve value from the use of OAC, though it would be expected that most of the participants would have familiarity with at least Excel.

Course objectives

Specific objectives are:

• understand what OAC is, its advantages and disadvantages over proprietary systems.
• be able to profile people post-coded files, calculate indices (relative propensity) and chart.
• use a market research or social survey table to estimate absolute propensities for OAC groups.
• be able to estimate behavioural or characterising values (e.g. income) for a people group, e.g. users of a library.
• be able to profile a bespoke geographical area (e.g. a Local Authority) and model behavioural estimates or resource demands for it (either relative or absolute).
• be able to map behavioural or resource estimates and debate the relative merits of using different ways of expressing the values.
• understand the opportunities of accessing an open geodemographic system (making ones own systems, further analysis, etc).

• use of the OAC variable database.

Material supplied with the course

The following data will be supplied as part of the course, and may be retained by participants for further use:

• postcode to OA look-up file (GB)- OA to OAC file (GB) with resident and household counts
• customer profiles of three newspapers (Sun, Telegraph and Guardian)
• the OAs that comprise the urban areas of Luton and Bath- a reduced London OA file containing OAC, residents and household counts and output area areas (hectares)

In addition, two PowerPoint presentations will be given and copies provided:

• what are geodemographics and OAC in particular?
• the advantages of an open geodemographic system

together with a detailed set of course notes.

Generous help from the Demographic User Group

The design of this course was originally funded by the Demographic User Group who is offering it to support the use of OAC in the wider community.

Bookings are NOT yet being taken for future one day courses until but if you are interested please contact the OAC administrator Martin Robson by email: martin.robson@lbhf.gov.uk