Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This research project aims to provide an in-depth study of the problems encountered in developing quantitative socio-economic indicators for urban and regional policy analysis in Britain. The project consisted of two stages. The data from the second stage of the study are held at the Data Archive under SN:3972. The aims of this part of the study, the first stage, were to address four main objectives, and the survey data here cover issues with respect to them. The objectives were :
to carry out an extensive literature review of urban and regional development theory in order to provide a conceptual basis for indicator construction;
to improve the understanding of the policy context and the key factors affecting local economic development in Britain with reference to implications of the European Union;
to identify in what ways indicators could be used to aid policy-makers to formulate their 'made-to-measure' area specific development strategies;
to derive a policy-focused and theoretically relevant analytical framework of key factors of local economic development which will then be translated into a 'wish list' of indicators for subsequent research work.
Main Topics:

A postal survey with a structured questionnaire was sent to the key person in each organisation. The questionnaire was designed to elicit their views on four sets of research questions:
What does local economic development (LED) mean to policy makers?
What are the objectives of LED?
What are importance of different LED factors?
In what ways can indicators aid the decision-making process?

Measurement Scales
Likert scales were used in the measurement of questions 6 and 7. Ranking was introduced in question 8 to measure the relative importance of different LED factors.