Hands on the Census: Microdata from the 1991 Census of Population in Britain

The stale is no longer the only, and perhaps no longer even the major, collector of systematic personal data on individuals. The expansion of information technology has led to a new private industry of information collection and management. Many companies take as their base the publicly available state collected information such as electoral registration lists. Some then may link to this other published records e.g. on bankruptcies and criminal records. Others specialise in the collation of information from pull-out questionnaires in magazines and so-called guarantee registration cards, others bring together personal financial information from major credit card companies and chain stores. Sometimes the aim of