Welsh Journals

Analysis of settlements in Mid-Wales: a multivariate approach I. J. BRACKEN Lecturer, Department of Town Planning, U. W.I.S. T., Cardiff In recent years there has been increased interest by geographers and planners in the application of multivariate statistical methods, and this has been greatly stimulated by their wider availability through the development of computing packages. While the application of these methods is at an early stage, and there are acknowledged theoretical and interpretative problems, there nevertheless appears to be potential both for analysts and policy makers. For the former, particularly, the methods hold out the possibility of an improved understanding of complex, inter-related social and economic phenomena, and for the latter, the possibility of a more sensitive recognition of the nature of relevant problems to be faced. Further, the methods offer the possibility of making better use of large amounts of 'social' data, notably that of the National Census. This paper describes, briefly, a research project within this context, conducted at the enumeration district level for the administrative County of Powys and generously sponsored by that Authority. In general, the purpose of the research is two-fold. The first purpose is to explore the nature of the inter-relationships and dependencies among a wide range of social and economic data by means of factor analytic methods. It is intended that the resulting multivariate descriptions should complement the more traditional forms of analysis used by geographers and planners and provide additional insights. The Factor Analytic approach (Spearman, 1904; Thurstone, 1947; Cattell, 1965; Rummell, 1967, 1970) is essentially one that investigates the possibility that the observed variance among a potentially large number of variables, may be accounted for, to a significant and interpretable degree, by the cal- culation of a smaller number of 'factors' or 'determinants' which the variables share in common to some extent. The methods, for factor analysis subsumes a family of techniques, have been used quite widely in the urban context-the so-called Social Area Analysis approach (Shevky and Bell, 1955; Moser and Scott, 1961; Robson, 1971) though applications to extendsive rural areas such as Mid- Wales are rare.