Survey on 2010 census practices Quality and Coverage Survey on 2010 census practices Peter Benton Office for National Statistics, UK

Establishment of a Quality & Coverage Task Force Background The 2012 CES conference (Paris) included discussions about the concerns that different approaches to census taking could have on the international comparability of population statistics Establishment of a Quality & Coverage Task Force

Objectives of the Task Force Review the 2010 national practices on this topic by way of an online survey; Revise the CES Recommendations for the 2020 round in light of the survey results, focussing in particular on: census quality; coverage assessment; census evaluation; quality reporting. Work began in September 2012 and membership included: Austria, Canada, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, UK (Chair), US, Eurostat, UNECE and UNFPA.

Importance of Quality Inconsistent approaches mean population statistics are not comparable across countries; The statistics are important (to the EU in particular) so outputs should be of known quality to enable informed decisions to be made; Poor quality data leads to incorrect decisions being made which can have costly implications.

Survey Results – Key Findings (Report ECE/CES/GE.41/2013/8) The majority (72 per cent) of countries managed all six dimensions in their 2010 census round and all but one managed accuracy; Where quality was managed, it was evenly split as to whether the information was published or not; Different countries use different methods to measure accuracy; Even split as to whether adjustments to the statistics were made in light of accuracy measurements; Most countries (73 per cent) did not set accuracy targets and for those that did, it was evenly split as to whether these were published; Two thirds are in favour of international accuracy targets being set.

Any questions? ?