Community profiles are broadly concerned with the characteristics of the people living in a spatial area, their social conditions, attitudes etc. However, studies differ markedly in their range. Other community studies may focus on particular topics in detail. You need to be guided by the issues prevalent in the community for which the profile is being developed.

Much thinking about community profiles centres on ‘quality of life’ social indicators, and these can provide useful frameworks. (See links above to the Social Report and Big City Quality of Life studies - and content descriptions appended to the ‘already-available sources webpage.) One difficulty with carrying out community profiles at smaller spatial scales is the lack of available data, especially concerning more subjective aspects of residents’ views, and thus for smaller studies fresh data might need to be collected: fortunately this is often easier in small areas!

Finally, it may be useful to carry out a community consultation to ensure that the community profile is well-grounded and that it covers issues of concern to stakeholders (thus enhancing the likelihood that the data will be used). Pointresearch have developed a useful set of questions that can guide a community profile (see attached generalised version Community Questions & Issues Schedule).

These questions probe for the community’s views on many issues which cannot be directly answered from available data. A list of suggested contacts to ask such questions is available here. Contacts (Word 27kb).

There is already some available information:

• suggesting what appropriate community goals might be - Possible Community Goals (Word 34k)
• analysing goals contained in Local Government 'Community Outcome' plans - Themes in Community Outcomes (Word 50k)
• NZ-level data on what is seen by respondents as general and more personal issues - NZES 'Most Important Issue' Data (2006) (Word 40k)
• Concerns on which Official Statistics are often employed by Local Authorities - What Does Local Government (Word 36k)

As well as community profiles (see attached 'Community Profiling') other related study approaches might be used with this data: see Study approaches (Word 25k). Statistics NZ developed for the 2006 census a series of small descriptions of studies which had been carried out using census data and these may provide some insightful examples: see Census Stories