FOI/2021/2802
You asked
ONS 2020 data suggests 96% of all households have internet access and 100% of households with children have internet access:
what are the data collection methods used, how do people without internet get included in this survey?
what is the confidence interval of the finding that 100% of households with children have internet access?
how does the ONS acknowledge data poverty and alternative lifestyles within its data collection and analysis?
is location within the UK captured by this data? is it possible to receive information granulated by location or region? For example, would it be possible for a CCG to gain information on internet use and digital exclusion, within the localities that are in their remit?
Please note that it would be helpful for the guidance of future policy that internet use by age and disability is cross-tabulated, to give information on how young disabled people use the internet.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The Internet Access Survey results are derived from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN). Estimates for 2020 in this release refer to data collected in the January and February 2020 modules of the OPN.
For this bulletin, the collection method of the OPN changed from telephone interviews to a mixed mode method, with online collection as the initial collection mode and telephone interviews for respondents who could not, or preferred not, to access the survey online.
As a result, 80% of respondents completed the survey online, with the remaining respondents completing via telephone interview.
In theory the estimated standard error for an estimated proportion of 100% would be zero as there were zero responses to the survey from households with children that did not have access to the internet. If you are interested in the proportion of households with children that do not have access to the internet, then this is in statistical terms a rare event that is difficult to estimate from a survey with an achieved sample of just 2,633 households.
If you define data poverty as the inability to afford sufficient data to meet one's needs, then the OPN does not collect such information, therefore this information is not held. The OPN does collect information on the characteristics of respondents, but does not ask specific questions about an individual's lifestyle.
Location within the UK is captured by the survey. However, we no longer publish estimates by geographies due to small sample sizes and potential issues relating to disclosure. We stopped publishing a geographic breakdown in 2018 and from this time, the following text was included on the Internet Access Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) page:
"The main limitation of the OPN is its sample size, which is relatively small compared with other ONS social surveys. This resulted in a net sample size of 2,633 for the Internet access results in 2020. The OPN is designed to be a sample survey of the population of Great Britain, but not lower levels of geography and for this reason, as well as because of the small sample size, there is limited scope for results to be prepared at regional levels."
We last published our Internet Users publication in 2020. This publication provides UK annual estimates for internet use by age, sex, disability, ethnic group, economic activity, and geographical location, including confidence intervals. This information was collected using the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and has a sample size that allows for more granular breakdowns. However, please note this data shows internet use, rather that internet access.