One can see how particular questions must be of crucial importance to particular organizations and interest groups.   I have no envy for those who have take on the responsibility for deciding between different claims.  Making such decisions are otiose because we know that governments are likely to throw away a a lot of the information that respondents may have painstakingly put together.  So why bother to collect it on a 100% basis?   Isn't it rather insulting to respondents?

Surely the proper solution is to have different forms for different respondents?   The Census could have a modular structure.   All forms would have the basic demographic questions, age, sex, DoB, etc.    But there would be a form with questions on income and occupation, say, going to 10% of households.   Another form with questions related to, say, migration going to 10% of households,   Another form with questions related to language, etc.

Such a modular approach would pose formidable problems for achieving a random distribution of the modules.  It would require involvementof the enumerator in the distribution process.   That  would upgrade enumerators work - which would be no bad thing.

More expensive?   Yes indeed.    But such a Census would have greatly enhanced value - commercially and to local authorities.

Perhaps most important it would require public explanation of the census and its purposes.     It is very difficult to give a convincing public explanation of the current census because the questions asked are difficult to defend.  More detailed questions should be more defendable.   People could be made to feel that they are making a positive contribution to the local economy and society.

Ray Thomas, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University
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-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Humphrey Southall
Sent: 07 November 2007 00:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Income questions and other questions in the 2011 Census

Having spent three hours today at an ONS advisory committee meeting
on the 2011 census, coming back to much of the discussion on the
Radstats list was a bit surreal.  I would rather report back on the
meeting than discuss some of the postings.

The meeting was the first since the big census test in May, and
probably the last before the questions are finalised ... or so one of
the papers for the meeting said.  This was later clarified with a
statement that ONS have already decided what questions they think
should be on the form, but (a) ONS does not take the final decision,
and (b) there is a decision still to be taken on the size of the
form, which has large cost implications.  As usual, part of the form
will be questions about the whole household, mainly about the
dwelling, but the larger part will be a series of questions to be
answered about each individual in the household (for up to six
household members in the standard form).

The issue is whether each household member gets three pages or four,
and these are the topics which will be asked about under each option:

                                                3 pages         4 pages

Name                                            Yes             Yes
Sex                                             Yes             Yes
Date of birth                                   Yes             Yes
Marital/civil partnership (new) status          Yes             Yes
Student status                          Yes             Yes
Term-time address                               Yes             Yes
Second residence (new)                  Yes             Yes
Country of birth                                Yes             Yes
Address one year ago                            Yes             Yes
Month/year of entry into UK (new)               Yes             Yes
Intention to stay in UK (new)                   No              Yes
Citizenship (new)                               Yes             Yes
Ethnicity                                       Yes             Yes
National identity (new)                                 Yes             Yes
Religion                                        Yes             Yes
Welsh language proficiency (Wales only)         Yes             Yes
Language (new)                          No              Yes
Health status                                   Yes             Yes
Long-term illness/disability                    Yes             Yes
Carers                                  No              Yes
Qualifications                                  No              Yes
Economic activity status                        Yes             Yes
NS-SEC (self-employed, occupation,              Yes             Yes
    supervisor status, ever worked)             Yes             Yes
Industry/name of employer                       No              Yes
Workplace address                               Yes             Yes
Transport to work                               Yes             Yes

Using the longer form is not seen as affecting response rates, so the
issue is cost:  four pages per person would cost an extra Pnds 22m.,
which ONS does not have but which they are asking other government
departments to contribute to.  The best guidance that they could give
us was that it is genuinely uncertain whether the money will be found.

I do have more detailed information on the actual proposed questions,
but too long-winded to repeat here.  There is nothing "secret" about
the documents that advisory group members get sent, but JISCmail does
not want us attaching long documents to list postings, and
re-publishing the documents on another web site would breach ONS
copyright, etc.  They say they will try to get them on their own
website before advisory meetings rather than after, to help us sound
opinions more widely.

The two issues I want to raise are:

(1) Neither option includes an income question, even though an income
question was included in some versions of the May census test
questionnaires, and we had been sent a separate paper discussing the
pros and cons which said no final decisions had been taken.  This is
when the bit about "ONS's decision" versus "the final decision" came
out.  In the past, much of the opposition to an income question came
from within ONS itself, and was based on concern about the impact on
response rates.  The test measured this, and showed that households
given an income question were 2.9% less likely to return it than
those gettings forms without the question -- and the impact on
response rates was fairly consistent across different categories of
areas defined in terms of "difficulty of enumeration".  Of course,
replying to the census test is entirely voluntary while the census
is, in principle, compulsory;  but in practice ONS see this as very
hard to enforce.

That information about response rates was interesting, and shows
there is a real "price" to be paid for an income question -- but the
main reason we were given for not including an income question in
2011 was that the central government departments and local government
bodies consulted saw it as a lower priority than the topics that were
being included, even in the four page version.  Today's meeting was a
joint meeting of the academic and business advisory groups, and
interestingly both constituencies were very unhappy about this.  IF
ANYONE WANTS AN INCOME QUESTION IN 2011, YOU NEED TO LOBBY HARD NOW.   

(2) Two questions which have been asked for much of the last century
get dropped in the three page version, on educational qualifications
and on industry/business of employer.  These are both very important
in getting an understanding of disadvantage -- it was pointed out
that knowing an "occupation", such as "engineer", is pretty useless
unless you also know what kind of employer they have -- car repairer
or engineering consultancy.  Two other questions asked in 2001,
although with less of an earlier history, are also dropped even from
the four page version:  number of employees, and hours worked.

Part of the reason there is a lack of space is the series of
questions on "identity" and immigration.  One worry is the obvious
political drivers behind these questions, but asking about
citizenship may have a larger impact on response rates in some parts
of the population than an income question (the actual questions is
about what passports are people entitled to hold, and is only asked
of people born outside the UK;  the question about "national
identity" is really about how people feel;  and the question about
"intention to stay in the UK" is obviously about intent.  Past
censuses have stuck to pretty basic factual issues, and there is
already evidence that many people, and not just special cases, find
it hard to answer these questions.

DO WE START A CAMPAIGN FOR "FOUR PAGES, NOT THREE"?

One downside of the longer questionnaire is that we will ALL have to
decide whether the French we learnt at school made us "fluent".  The
introduction of civil partnerships has made the marital status
question much more complicated;  one of the options now is
"Separated, but still legally in a civil partnership".  Lastly, I
have asked if there is any statement available on ensuring
contractors follow the rules on confidentiality.

Best wishes,

Humphrey Southall

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