> There is already close to an expectation that 2011 will be the last census
I'm shocked to hear this. What about all the historical data that censuses
(eventually) make available to future generations? Do the millions of
family historians out there know about these plans?
Sue
|-----Original Message-----
|From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of
|Humphrey Southall
|Sent: 01 November 2007 09:39
|To: [log in to unmask]
|Subject: 2011 Census (was: More about Lockheed Martin and the census)
|
|At 05:04 01/11/2007, you wrote:
|>Sadly nothing seems have been learned by the Government from this
|>experience. I asked the senior statisticians at a meeting last
|>week what plans the ONS are making to try and count people who don't
|>want to be counted. His reply was that he did not see making such
|>estimates as belonging to the ONS.
|Not sure this is entirely true. In the initial briefings on 2011,
|one of the goals was accepted to be "a higher quality enumeration",
|and it was expected to cost more money as a result. The "one number"
|approach was driven partly by an attempt to save money via
|substituting statistical cleverness for fieldwork.
|
|My own big worry about 2011 is the proposal to achieve the "better
|enumeration" partly by dividing the country into two kinds of area,
|"hard to enumerate" and everywhere else. The latter will be surveyed
|entirely by posting out forms which are then to be posted
|back; enumerators knocking on doors will be concentrated on the hard
|to enumerate areas.
|
|To a very considerable extent, "hard to enumerate" means poor
|(although it also includes areas with large transient populations
|such as students), and it is generally accepted that most "poor
|people" do not live in "poor areas" (depends, of course, on the exact
|definition of "poor"). Although the identification of hard to
|enumerate areas is supposed to be fine-grained, there is an obvious
|risk that poor people living elsewhere will be under-enumerated.
|
|>A further fall in response rate in 2011 can be expected to lead to
|>calls for the abandonment of the census. It will be diffiult to
|>resist these calls in terms of data needs. So the abandonment it
|>will be regrettable only in terms of loss of the the one opportunity
|>that all ciizens have of participating in the production of statistics.
|
|Not sure about "lead to calls". A lot of people in ONS regard the
|drop in response rates as a long-term trend reflecting changes in
|attitude to authority, and outside their control. There is already
|close to an expectation that 2011 will be the last census, and that
|thereafter we will follow several other European countries in
|switching to a system based on population registers.
|
|Humphrey
|
|
|
|
|====================================
|Humphrey Southall
|Reader in Geography/Director,
|Great Britain Historical GIS Project
|Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth
|Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE
|
|GIS Project Office: (023) 9284 2500
|Home office: (020) 8853 0396
|Mobile: 0796 808 5454
|
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