Individual exercises to help test your understanding and knowledge of key areas of text. Complete them to see your strengths and weaknesses.

Smith, D P and Sage, J. (2014) The regional migration of young adults in England and Wales (2002‒2008): a ‘conveyor-belt’ of population redistribution?, Children’s Geographies 12(1): 102‒117.

The authors explore the regional patterns of young adult migration. Using secondary data from the National Health Service Central Register for England and Wales between 2002 and 2008 they analyse migrations of young people between regions. They show that young adults are increasing as a proportion of regional migrants (i.e. taking the migrations of all ages into account) and that the migration flow of 16‒24 year olds increased between 2002 and 2008, with there being major regional differences in these flows. They use their analysis of secondary data to investigate the idea of ‘escalator regions’ in Britain.

Reflective Exercise

Using the information above, answer the following questions:

• What secondary dataset did they use in their research?
• What type of secondary data was it?
• In what ways did they use the secondary data?
• In what other ways might they have considered using it?