Census Questions Research Articles

An evaluation method for the designing quality of language item questions in censuses

ABSTRACT Globally, countries or regions across from east to west like Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States have incorporated language item questions in their censuses. The assessment of such design advantages and disadvantages is crucial for academic investigation. Despite ongoing discussions, there is a noticeable lack of comprehensive references offering a full set of evaluation methods for assessing these question designs. Current literature often focuses on specific aspects, underscoring the need for a holistic evaluation. This research employs literature and induction methodologies to assess the design quality of language item questions in censuses. After reviewing past references and analysing 74 questionnaires collected from nine countries and regions over three centuries, we have identified 37 specific criteria. These criteria, categorised into economy, comprehensiveness, and rationality, form a comprehensive evaluation framework. This new framework offers a systematic approach for assessing census language question design, with significant implications for policy-making and academia. It provides a valuable tool for policymakers to make informed decisions about language question design, and serves as a guide for future academic research in this field.

Building an Equitable Future Through Data Disaggregation.

Building an Equitable Future Through Data Disaggregation.

From experiences to numbers: the production of international disability statistics

The call for internationally comparable data on disability has been omnipresent in recent disability politics. Several attempts have been made to develop and implement a standardized approach toward disability statistics, with the Washington Group Short Census Questions (WGSQ) being the most prominent. How does this questionnaire ‘measure’ disability? How do disability statistics translate the diversity of lived experiences into ‘objective’ numbers? Combining a sociology of quantification and disability studies, this article focuses on the social practices of disability statistics that contribute to the generation of ‘disability’ as a social category. After contextualizing ‘disability’ in international organizations’ discourses, it uses document analysis to empirically reconstruct statistical experts’ recommendations regarding definition, operationalization, data collection, and processing. The analysis shows how binary categorical boundaries are (re)introduced and successively objectified during this process. It also unfolds a risk-based approach that underlies the WGSQ and deviates from a social model of disability.

Do Conceptualisations of ‘Mixed Race’, ‘Interracial Unions’, and Race’s ‘Centrality to Understandings of Racism’ Challenge the UK’s Official Categorisation by Ethnic Group?

A focus on ‘mixed race’ and mixedness in Britain has revived a debate around the central question of whether the decennial census and other official data collections should be capturing ‘race’ rather than ethnic group and producing ‘racial’ outputs. The British practice may seem out of step by some commentators, given that ‘mixed race’ is the term of choice amongst those it describes, and given scholarly interest in interracial unions. Moreover, the resurgence of interest in ‘race’ and racisms in the context of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and concern over the down-playing in a UK Government-commissioned report of the role of structural racism has enlivened the debate. However, this paper argues against a shift to ‘race’ in official data collection and for continued use of the conceptually preferable ‘ethnic group’ in the census question title, the section label ‘mixed/multiple ethnic groups’, and the ongoing provision of data on unions at the pan-ethnic and granular levels. A measure of socially constructed ‘race’ is already available in all but name in the pan-ethnic section labels (White, Asian, Black, Mixed, and Other) and the tick boxes under the ‘mixed/multiple’ heading. Ethnic group has been the conceptual basis of the question since the field trials for the 1991 Census, and its position has been strengthened by the increasing granularity of the categorisation (19 categories in the 2021 England and Wales Census) and by substantial distributed free-text provision that underpins the question’s context of self-identification. The wider understanding of ‘race’ identifications invokes ascription, imposition, and social categorisation rather than self-identification and subscription. There is also evidence of the unacceptability of ‘race’ in the context of the census amongst the wider society.

Razlike u kohortnom fertilitetu prema migracijskom obilježju: slučaj Grada Zagreba

Razlike u kohortnom fertilitetu prema migracijskom obilježju: slučaj Grada Zagreba

The mobilities and immobilities of rural gentrification: Staying put or moving on?

AbstractThis paper analyses census data for England and Wales to explore the ties between processes of rural gentrification and recent internal migration. Internal migrants are defined as individuals who moved subnationally to their current address in the previous 12 months, as indicated by the replies to the 2001 and 2011 census question about usual address 1 year ago. Our analysis reveals declining rural in‐migration rates between 2001 and 2011, in parallel with other recent studies of internal migration. At the same time, uneven geographies of rural in‐migration are identified. In rural places with declining in‐migration rates, we emphasise the immobilities of settled gentrifiers that are caused by predilections to ‘stay put’ within prized, rural places for age‐related personal/emotional, social/support and economic reasons. This is limiting the supply pipeline of housing for latent in‐migrants and slowing flows of migration per se in saturated rural housing markets. By contrast, rural places with increasing in‐migration rates may signify new frontiers of gentrification, providing channels of entry for recent migrants that are not able to buy into exclusive high‐cost gentrified markets. Our novel argument is that despite gentrification being inherently a process of migration, when viewed in a broader temporal perspective, mature and exclusive forms of gentrification can also stifle migration and be the catalyst for immobilities.

Introduction to the census questions special issue

No abstract

Linking Armed Forces Leavers to 2011 Census

IntroductionThe aim of this project was to meet a user need for more data on those who have served, and now left, the UK armed forces (service leavers) to support commitments under the Armed Forces Covenant. We explored the feasibility of linking the Veteran Leavers Database (VLD) held by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to 2011 Census data held by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).
 Objectives and ApproachThe Census for England, Wales and Northern Ireland consisted of a total number of 56 million records. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) provided the Veteran Leavers Database (VLD) which contained two million records of individuals who have left the armed forces since 1971.
 Postcode information was not available for this linkage, therefore a bespoke set of matchkeys was created and clerical review was carried out to determine the best set of recommended matchkeys. The linkage was carried out within the secure linkage environment using pseudonymised data to protect the identities of individuals within these datasets.
 Results53% of all VLD records linked to a Census record on one of the recommended matchkeys.
 Further quality analysis was carried out on the linkage rates by different years of exit which showed that, after 1975, the rate of matched records improved the closer the VLD entry was to Census year.
 Conclusion / ImplicationsONS have concluded that whilst there is value in the administrative datasets on service leavers, it only partially meets the user need. A census question has been developed and tested on service leavers and it has been concluded that such a question will work. ONS therefore now intending to recommend inclusion of this topic in the 2021 Census.

Consequences of Asking Sensitive Questions in Surveys

I review selected articles from the survey methodology literature on the consequences of asking sensitive questions in censuses and surveys, using a total survey error (TSE) framework. I start with definitions of sensitive questions and move to examination of the impact of including sensitive questions on various sources of survey error—specifically, survey respondents’ willingness to participate in a survey (unit nonresponse), their willingness to respond to next rounds of interviews (wave nonresponse), their likelihood to provide an answer to sensitive questions after agreeing to participate in the survey (item nonresponse), and the accuracy of respondents’ answers to sensitive questions (measurement error). I also review the simultaneous impact of sensitive questions on multiple sources of error in survey estimates and discuss strategies to mitigate the impact of asking sensitive questions on measurement errors. I conclude with a summary and suggestions for future research.

Census politics in Northern Ireland from the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit: Beyond the ‘sectarian headcount’?

While ethno-national demography has featured significantly in political and scholarly debates about Northern Ireland, little attention has been paid to the politics of the Northern Ireland census itself. This article addresses this gap by exploring census politics since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It demonstrates that the border poll provision of the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit have increased the political salience of census results, with the 2021 census now being anticipated by many as a potential referendum trigger. Against this background, I argue that new census questions – on religious background and national identity – have had significant consequences for debates about the constitutional future. Introduced in order to satisfy requirements stemming partly from equalities legislation, an unintended consequence of the religious background question has been to reinforce ‘two communities’ narratives in constitutional debates, whereas the national identity question has served to problematise assumptions about relationships between identity and constitutional preferences.

Should trans people be postmodernist in the streets but positivist in the spreadsheets? A reply to Sullivan

ABSTRACT Accurate census data is essential for a variety of government planning functions and plays an important methodological role in social science. This article responds to issues raised by Alice Sullivan concerning how the UK 2021 census will ask about sex and gender. The two-centuries-old question about male/female sex is not ideal, even with the new guidance proposed; however, I will argue that the proposed changes are unlikely to cause harm. The new open-ended census question on gender identity is welcome and will yield important data. I also respond to Sullivan‘s worries that “queer postmodernists” are “coming for” questionnaires and threaten the sanctity of scientific fact. Sullivan misrepresents trans-inclusive gender theories and how scientific research explaining sex/gender differences is carried out. Finally, I discuss how questioning the ontological reality of trans gender identities leads to transphobic harassment and worse.

The British business census of entrepreneurs and firm-size, 1851–1881: New data for economic and business historians

The British census asked employers to record their workforce numbers. The responses to this instruction provide a unique resource on firm size. While the responses were digitized and included in the Individual Census Microdata (I-CeM) deposit, their format limits their utility. A further data deposit, the British Business Census of Entrepreneurs (BBCE), overcomes I-CeM’s deficiencies by infilling data gaps and parsing employer and workforce data into separate fields. This paper evaluates the coverage in I-CeM and BBCE data for this specific census question, and compares these with the published census analysis of the same data. The results prove the benefits of the BBCE data over I-CeM on the subject of firm size, and demonstrate the need for caution in using the published tables.

Question of ethnic group formulation in the Chinese census

In conjunction with official government information and existing research literature, this article discusses ethnic group formulation in the censuses of China since 1953. Followed by an examination of concept of “ethnicity”, the research explores the purpose of the question included in the census, ways to answer the census question, and changes in number of official ethnic groups finalized until 1980s in China. To make a good study on ethnicity by census statistics, we have to understand the system of census taking on ethnicity in different countries. As a country with different minority groups, China is undergoing a social transformation and improving its census-taking. Ethnicity-related information collected in the census will play a more important role in the development of Chinese society.

Size, spatial and household distribution, and rabies vaccination coverage of the Brazilian owned-dog population.

Dog rabies and human rabies transmitted by dogs can be prevented through adequate dog vaccination coverage. For surveillance purposes, this coverage must be calculated using accurate population size estimates to avoid misleading conclusions. We used data from a Brazilian national survey comprising 64,348 households, to calculate point estimates and confidence intervals of the size, household density, and rabies vaccination coverage of the owned-dog population in Brazilian federative units. We also evaluated the precision of owned-dog population size estimates, based on the extrapolation among different areas, of the mean number of dogs per household and the human/dog ratio. The estimated owned-dog population size in Brazil was 52,198,324 (95% CI=51,028,583-53,368,066) and the dog vaccination coverage was 80.09% (95% CI=79.09%-81.09%). Both estimates had marked variation across Brazilian federative units and urban/rural strata. Only two of the 27 federative units had a confidence interval in rural vaccination coverage above 70% and six did not pass this threshold in their urban stratum. For the first time, we reported probabilistic estimates for an entire country and its main administrative areas. The estimated coverage for the country was high because the most populated federative unit also had high coverage. The mean number of dogs per household and the human/dog ratio were useful as survey estimates to characterize owned-dog density. However, the simple extrapolation of these parameters resulted in estimates of owned-dog population sizes with large errors (up to 254%) that must be interpreted with caution to avoid misleading conclusions. To evaluate the dog population size, we recommend the use of probabilistic sampling designs instead of simple human/dog ratio extrapolations, and the inclusion of animal-related questions in censuses and national surveys to obtain reliable estimates to support improvements in animal and human health.

The Sri Lankan community of descent in the UK: a neglected population in demographic and health research

ABSTRACTThe Sri Lankan diaspora population is substantially neglected in UK demographic and health research and not captured in census and survey ethnic group questions, though 127,242 Sri Lankan-born migrants were enumerated in England and Wales in 2011. Important intersections are reported between the period of arrival of these migrants, the purpose behind their movement, and related population characteristics, with 47% having arrived during 2001–2011. Between 1984 and 2004 around 50,000 asylum applications were made by Sri Lankan Tamils. Sri Lankan migrants generally display more favourable circumstances on key socio-economic variables than do other diaspora populations from South Asia. These include generic health status and mortality. This may be attributable to the ‘healthy migrant’ effect, given the community’s recent migration, though the application of its effect to this population requires caution as a significant proportion came to Britain as asylum-seekers (forced migration) rather than as self-selecting migrants. A more advantageous socio-economic profile may also have contributed.

3.11-P4Scotland’s Census questions: past, present and future

3.11-P4Scotland’s Census questions: past, present and future

Single and Mixed Origins in the Census and in American Jewish Sociology: A Comment on Bruce A. Phillips’s Sklare Lecture

This comment on Phillips's Sklare lecture explores issues inherent in the U.S. Census ancestry, Hispanic origin and race questions insofar as they offer useful ways of thinking about mixed-origin populations and subjective reports of ethno-racial identity. The experience of creating the Census questions and the limitations of using them will also be relevant to the study of American Jewry, now and in the future.

Distorted, Dangerous Data? Lumyo in the 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census

Although Myanmar undertook its first census in thirty-one years in 2014, the governments of President Thein Sein and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi have withheld the ethnicity statistics polled in the enumeration. The Ministry of Immigration and Population and the United Nations Population Fund framed the census question on ethnicity — or lumyo — to fail to produce reliable data, given that it neither met international standards nor took into account the complex and politically charged landscape of ethnicity in Myanmar. As a result, the ethnic results of the 2014 Population and Housing Census came to be viewed as destabilizing to the political reform and peace processes.

On the plausibility of socioeconomic mortality estimates derived from linked data: a demographic approach

BackgroundReliable estimates of mortality according to socioeconomic status play a crucial role in informing the policy debate about social inequality, social cohesion, and exclusion as well as about the reform of pension systems. Linked mortality data have become a gold standard for monitoring socioeconomic differentials in survival. Several approaches have been proposed to assess the quality of the linkage, in order to avoid the misclassification of deaths according to socioeconomic status. However, the plausibility of mortality estimates has never been scrutinized from a demographic perspective, and the potential problems with the quality of the data on the at-risk populations have been overlooked.MethodsUsing indirect demographic estimation (i.e., the synthetic extinct generation method), we analyze the plausibility of old-age mortality estimates according to educational attainment in four European data contexts with different quality issues: deterministic and probabilistic linkage of deaths, as well as differences in the methodology of the collection of educational data. We evaluate whether the at-risk population according to educational attainment is misclassified and/or misestimated, correct these biases, and estimate the education-specific linkage rates of deaths.ResultsThe results confirm a good linkage of death records within different educational strata, even when probabilistic matching is used. The main biases in mortality estimates concern the classification and estimation of the person-years of exposure according to educational attainment. Changes in the census questions about educational attainment led to inconsistent information over time, which misclassified the at-risk population. Sample censuses also misestimated the at-risk populations according to educational attainment.ConclusionThe synthetic extinct generation method can be recommended for quality assessments of linked data because it is capable not only of quantifying linkage precision, but also of tracking problems in the population data. Rather than focusing only on the quality of the linkage, more attention should be directed towards the quality of the self-reported socioeconomic status at censuses, as well as towards the accurate estimation of the at-risk populations.

Awkward questions: language issues in the 2011 census in England

ABSTRACTThe 2011 Census in England broke new ground, as a question about language had never previously been asked. After stakeholder consultations and a series of trials, the census authority decided on two questions based on earlier censuses in the USA: one about the respondent’s ‘main language’ and another about proficiency in English. This paper provides a critique of the census questions, showing how the pressure to produce questions which were straightforward to answer and consistent with the predominant monolingual ideology led to the choice of two questions which were problematic in different ways. This raises doubts about the validity of the questions themselves and the usefulness of the data collected.