25: Census Small Areas Data [C-grades and above]#
You now have a map of the Census 2022 Small Areas vector polygons for your area. Now you need to get the actual data to go with each of these polygons.
Importing Processing Visualising the Data#
Go back to the page for data from the 2022 census on the CSO website, and the table under Download Small Area Data and Boundary Files.
Last time, you downloaded the CSO Small Areas under Ungeneralised Boundaries (UG). This time, you’ll get the attribute data: click the CSO Small Areas 2022 (18,919) link in the first cell of the CSV Download column. The data should begin to download.
There’s one more file you’ll need here. Just above the table, you’ll see a link to the SAPS 2022 Glossary (XLS 30KB). Click the link to download this file as well. You won’t be adding this file to QGIS, but this is a glossary which you’ll need to identify what each column in the Small Areas census data tables represesnts.
When the Census Small Areas data tables file has downloaded - as SAPS_2022_Small_Area_270923.csv - move it to the SAPS subfolder of your GY4006 folder.
We need to do something different to add the this census data tables file to QGIS – you can’t just drag and drop it in.
From the menu bar, go to Layer > Add Layer > Add Delimited Text Layer.
(A ‘delimited text’ file is a simple way of storing a lot of data. Rather than complex formatting into tables or the like, the data is stored as ordinary text, with the different columns which are delimited (meaning separated) by punctuation – e.g. a space, a tab, a semicolon, or a comma. In this case, the data is delimited, or separated, by a comma; there is a comma between every point of data. This is called a Comma Separated Values file, or CSV – hence the .csv at the end of the name.)
The Data Source Manager should now be open: Click on the Browse button (…) next to the File name bar, browse to find and select the SAPS2016_SA2017.csv data file, and click Open to close the file select window.
Make sure the following options are selected:
Under File Format, select CSV (comma separated values)
Under Records and Fields Options, select both First record has field names and Detect field types
Under Geometry Definition, choose No geometry (attribute only table)
Now you can click Add, followed by Close. You should now see the SAPS2016_SA2017 layer in the Layers panel, with an icon indicating that it is an attribute table, with no geometry definition.
Save the project before continuing.