How to create stock groups based on top 10% most deprived LSOAs

Within Community Insight it is really quick and easy to set up any custom geography you are interested in – whether that is a ward, a local authority, parish or GP locality.

Another type of area (or stock group in Community Insight) that may be of particular use to you, is a composite area of all the LSOAs in your service patch that fall within the top 10% or 20% most deprived nationally, according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

It is fairly straightforward to work out which LSOAs fall within these deciles in your area and then create a stock group based upon these LSOAs through selecting from the standard areas dropdown.

Step-by-step guide

Here is a step-by-step guide for identifying the LSOAs to include, with the help of a handy tool from Swirrl.

1. Open the IMD Explorer tool

Visit http://imd-by-geo.opendatacommunities.org/imd/2019/area

2. Select the geography

Select the Local Authority or County that you are interested in from the list.

3. Select the index you are interested in:

Most organisations will likely be interested in the overall Index of Multiple Deprivation. However, if you are interested in a particular theme, such as health or employment, you can choose one of these domains instead.

4. Select the decile you are interested in:

If you are interested in the top 10% most deprived LSOAs, select decile 1 and download

If you are interested in the top 20% most deprived LSOAs, you will need to download the data for decile 1 and decile 2 separately

NB: If this produces an empty file, it means that there are no LSOAs within your service patch that fall within this decile.

The following steps assume you are looking at the top 10% most deprived (decile 1). You will need to repeat these steps for decile 2 if you are looking at the top 20% most deprived.

5. Remove duplicates

The file you have downloaded provides you with all of the postcodes that are in the top 10% most deprived alongside their corresponding LSOA codes. For this purpose, we are only interested in the LSOAs that are in the top 10% most deprived, so you need to remove the duplicates in the LSOA code column (column C). To do this:

  1. Click on the Data tab in the tool bar
  2. Select Remove Duplicates
  3. Select the ‘LSOA Code’ check box only
  4. This is now your list of individual LSOAs within your service patch that fall in the top 10% most deprived nationally.
remove duplicates

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6. Create your stock group in Community Insight

You can now create your stock group in Community Insight. Please note, you must be a Power User or Group Admin to be able to do this.

The easiest method to create the stock group in Community Insight is through the Create a stock group by selecting a standard area option. This guidance is for users looking at one local authority. If you are creating an area for a county, please see step 7.

  1. Provide a name and description for your area (Please note names cannot be longer than 255 characters)
  2. In the stock group type box, select create area based on standard area
  3. Select LSOA as the geography
  4. Select the local authority the LSOAs are in
  5. Select from the dropdown all the LSOA codes that correspond to those in your download (if you have a few LSOAs you can use Control+F, or Command+F on a Mac to find the codes you need)
  6. Save the stock group
create custom area

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7. Create a stock group that spans multiple local authorities

If you are creating a stock group that spans multiple local authorities (such as a county), please send the full list of LSOA codes you would like included in your area to support@ocsi.co.uk and we can set this up for you.

8. Explore data for your custom area

Your stock group is now ready to use. You can now: