Feeling of belonging to a neighbourhood

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Last updated 14 May 2019 - see all updates

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1. Main facts and figures

  • overall, in 2017/18, 62% of people aged 16 and over in England said they felt strongly that they belonged to their immediate neighbourhood
  • 65% of people from the Asian ethnic group felt strongly that they belonged to their immediate neighbourhood, followed by 63% of White people, 56% of people from the Black and Mixed ethnic groups, and 44% of people from the Other ethnic group
Things you need to know

The Community Life Survey (previously the Citizenship Survey) is a ‘sample survey’: it collects information from a random sample of the population to make generalisations (reach ‘findings’) about the total population.

Keep in mind when making comparisons between ethnic groups that all survey estimates are subject to a degree of uncertainty, as they are based on a sample of the population. The degree of uncertainty is greater when the number of respondents is small, so it will be highest for ethnic minority groups.

The commentary only refers to differences between groups where they are ‘statistically significant’. Findings are statistically significant when we can be confident that they can be repeated, and are reflective of the total population rather than just the survey sample.

Specifically, the statistical tests used mean we can be confident that if we carried out the same survey on different random samples of the population, 19 times out of 20 we would get similar findings.

Results by ethnic group are available in the reference tables of the latest Community Life Survey publication.

What the data measures

This data measures how strongly people feel they belong to their immediate neighbourhood, and breaks down that information by ethnicity.

As part of the Community Life Survey, people aged 16 and over were asked: ‘How strongly do you feel you belong to your immediate neighbourhood?’. Respondents could answer either ‘very strongly’, ‘fairly strongly’, ‘not very strongly’ or ‘not at all strongly’.

People who answered ‘fairly strongly’ or ‘very strongly’ were categorised as feeling strongly that they belonged to their neighbourhood.

The ethnic categories used in this data

Respondents were asked to indicate their ethnicity from a choice of 18 categories.

For this data, the number of people surveyed (the ‘sample size’) was too small to draw any firm conclusions about these specific ethnic categories. Therefore, the data here is broken down into the following 5 broad groups:

  • Asian
  • Black
  • Mixed
  • White
  • Other

2. By ethnicity

Percentage of respondents who felt ‘fairly strongly’ or ‘very strongly’ they belong to their neighbourhood, by ethnicity
2016/17 2017/18
Ethnicity 2016/17 Value 2016/17 Number of respondents 2017/18 Value 2017/18 Number of respondents
All 62 10,215 62 10,173
Asian 64 1,109 65 925
Black 60 357 56 353
Mixed 65 462 56 508
White 61 7,996 63 8,067
Other 62 162 44 124

Download table data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV)

Summary of Feeling of belonging to a neighbourhood By ethnicity Summary

This data shows that:

  • overall, in 2017/18, 62% of people aged 16 and over in England said they felt strongly that they belonged to their immediate neighbourhood
  • people from the Asian (65%) and White (63%) ethnic groups were more likely to say they felt strongly that they belonged to their immediate neighbourhood than people from the Mixed (56%) and Other (44%) ethnic groups – this was in contrast with the previous year, when there was no significant difference between ethnic groups
  • in 2017/18, the percentage of people from the White, Black and Asian ethnic groups who felt strongly that they belonged to their immediate neighbourhood was similar to that in 2016/17, but there was a decrease among people in the Mixed and Other ethnic groups of 9 and 18 percentage points respectively
  • although the figures show differences between Black people and those from other ethnic groups in feeling strongly that they belonged to their immediate neighbourhood, these differences were not reliable and it is not possible to draw firm conclusions

3. Methodology

The Community Life Survey consists of an online or paper questionnaire, which was completed by 10,217 individuals in 2017/18.

The survey has deliberately surveyed more households from ethnic minority groups, (excluding White ethnic minorities). This is because the smaller populations of these groups would otherwise give less reliable results.

The 2016/17 and 2017/18 survey samples are large enough for the results to be broken down by 5 broad ethnic groups. Before 2016/17, interviews were conducted face to face and the sample size was smaller. This meant it was only possible to compare White people with those from all other ethnic groups combined.

In the 2014/15 and 2015/16 survey years, sample sizes ranged from around 2,000 to 3,000 respondents, which was too small for reliable conclusions about differences between the White and Other ethnic groups. For these reasons, results for 2016/17 onwards are not compared with those from 2014/15 to 2015/16.

For earlier years, results are available for reference purposes in the published tables in the series of releases for the Community Life Survey.

Weighting:

Weighting is used to adjust the results of a survey to make them representative of the population and improve their accuracy.

For example, a survey which contains 25% females and 75% males will not accurately reflect the views of the general population, which we know is around 50% male and 50% female.

Statisticians rebalance or ‘weight’ the survey results to more accurately represent the general population. This helps to make them more reliable.

Survey weights are usually applied to make sure the survey sample has broadly the same gender, age, ethnic and geographic make up as the general population. In this case they also took account of the over-sampling in any national estimates.

Suppression rules and disclosure control

Results are not published when based on fewer than 30 respondents. All the results presented here are based on sample sizes of more than 100 respondents.

Rounding

Estimates in the charts and tables are given to the nearest percentage.

Quality and methodology information

4. Data sources

Source

Type of data

Survey data

Type of statistic

Official statistics

Publisher

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Publication frequency

Yearly

Purpose of data source

The Community Life Survey tracks developments in areas that are important to encouraging social action and empowering communities.

These include:

  • volunteering and charitable giving
  • neighbourhood (views about the local area, community cohesion and belonging)
  • civic engagement and social action
  • well-being

5. Download the data

Feeling of belonging to one's neighbourhood - Spreadsheet (csv) 781 bytes

This file contains the following: ethnicity, time, value, sample size