07Data and Methodology Note
The data for this report comes from a number of data sources.
Overall migration patterns – ONS Internal Migration data for 2009-2015. This time period was used as it was the longest available to assess patterns of internal migration within England and Wales.
Migration by qualification – Commissioned data from Census 2011. The Census asked respondents where they lived a year (March 2010) previously, and so gives us a one year snapshot.
University students by home (domicile) before university and place of study – HESA data for 2014/15 for all students at university in that academic year.
Destinations of new graduates – HESA Destination of Leavers for Higher Education Survey for the years 2013/14 and 2014/15, which asks students what they were doing six months after graduation. Two years were used to reduce any issues of small sample sizes when cutting the data. The survey gives the pre-university student location, where they went to university and where they subsequently were six months after graduation, allowing us to track them.
A number of data cleaning steps were taken for this data:
- People undertaking an Open University degree were dropped because this is taught remotely rather than on campus.
- People who did not give a geographic location of employment were dropped.
- To look at graduate workers, full time postgraduate students were dropped so that people moving for further study after graduation, who are likely to have different criteria for their move, were excluded.