Best & Worst Places To Live Best And Worst: Methods & Sources

Date Published:

06/06/2008

The Location, Location, Location: Best and Worst Live programme has been running for three years now, and judging by viewers' reactions, you don't always agree with the outcome. However, the results are compiled on a strictly scientific basis. Here's how...
By Andrea Dean

Statistician's Viewpoint & Overview

Head statistician Dr Marc Farr, Honorary Professor at University College London, was given the task of analysing all the data to produce the lists of 40 Best and Worst places to live in the UK.

Despite the seeming enormity of the project, he reckons that it was all pretty straightforward, 'It took a team of up to seven researchers several months to gather all the data,' he says. 'And we introduced some new variables, such as life expectancy and suicide rates, that weren't included last year. But fortunately there weren't many problems. The only slight difficulty is in comparing data which has been gathered in different ways in different parts of the UK - for example the Scottish education and exam system is different to that in England and Wales.'

So, how did they do it? All the UK's 434 local authorities were judged on exactly the same criteria - crime, education, employment, environment, lifestyle and health, using the most up to date official statistics. Once the research team had collated the data, a consultant statistician was called in to analyse it.

A representative sample of a thousand people across the UK, aged 18 upwards, were asked which of the six criteria would be most important to them if they were to consider moving home, and to then rank the rest in order. Overall they prioritised them in order as: Crime; Environment; Lifestyle; Health; Education; Employment.

The results of this survey were used to weight the criteria in order of importance to the homebuyer.