ABSTRACT
Governments have traditionally relied upon three main sources of statistics. Civil registration is complete and highly reliable, since it is virtually impossible to conceal a birth or death, but the data are of limited interest and primarily used by demographers. The most important multi-purpose continuous survey in Britain is the General Household Survey, carried out annually since 1971. The importance and authority of the data obtained in these continuous surveys derive not only from their comprehensiveness, the relatively large sample sizes, or the high standards of their field-work conducted by OPCS Social Survey Division, but from the fact that they are nationally representative. The response rate of 82 per cent thus refers to personal interviews completed by an OPCS interviewer in the home of the household selected, with a small minority of proxy interviews where a member was absent. The category of single-parent families is not homogeneous.
