Post Enumeration Survey Plans for Afghanistan Population and Housing Census By: Mohammad Sami Nabi Director, Field Operations Department Central Statistics Organization, Afghanistan

Census and PES Schedules: Census month: September 2011    Census month: September 2011 PES month : October 2011 Objectives of the 2011 PES: To determine the extent of coverage and content errors of the actual Census To determine operational flaws of the Census

Conduct of PES by: Private organization, Other Government Organization, or Central Statistics Organization (enumerators/ supervisors to be recruited/utilized for PES will be different from those of the Census teams) Funding Plan: International Donors, and Resources from the Government of Afghanistan

Recruitment of enumerators and supervisors   For the First and Second Option (Private Organization or Other Government Institution): CSO will make sure that the said organization that will be selected to conduct PES has the same or higher level of technical and operational capacity to undertake a data collection process For the Third Option (CSO): CSO will select a set of enumerators and supervisors different from those that will be utilized for the census. Since PES will be regarded as the benchmark for checking the quality of the census results, CSO will make sure that the personnel to be utilized for PES have a higher qualification from those census enumerators and supervisors. If on the other hand, CSO could not find those personnel with higher qualification needed for PES, CSO will select the best from among those utilized for the census to act as PES enumerators and supervisors. For PES, they will be assigned in areas different from their census assignments

PES sampling design:   Sampling for PES will be designed in such a way that the level of estimates are reliable at the provincial level. Afghanistan has 34 provinces. Independence between PES and Census To ensure independence, the ideal process is for another organization, either private or another government agency to conduct PES. However, the problem in Afghanistan is that we may not be able to find such an organization/agency. Hence, we may resort to the third option , that is, CSO will conduct but utilizing different sets of enumerators/supervisors

Method of matching and field reconciliation visits Matching rules adopted by other countries will be studied to determine their applicability in Afghansitan’s context Likewise, procedures for field reconciliation visits will be designed in order not to compromise the security of enumerators and supervisors especially in those areas with severe security problems

Produce a report to inform lay users: While the initial plan of CSO is to inform lay users about the results of the PES, situations in Afghanistan will have to be examined first before this could be made. Also, the final decision will have to be made by the National Statistics Committee which is tasked to ensure better regulation of statistical activities in the country, and to advise the CSO, and other ministries and state administrations on statistical work plans. The Committee is headed by the Vice President of Afghanistan, with the head of relevant ministers and state administrations as members Duration from the date of data collection to release of PES analytical report in the country: The release of census results is planned one year after data collection. Hence, if census results will be adjusted based on the results of PES, then PES analytical report will be released at the same time with the census results  

Do we use the PES/census evaluation results to adjust the census figures? The following will be considered in deciding whether or not to conduct PES and use PES results to adjust the census results: Availability of highly qualified enumerators and supervisors to undertake PES Assurance of independence of operation between the census and PES Acceptance of public to be visited and interviewed again Bad security situation in most parts of the county which may not be possible for PES to be undertaken Availability of funding Political acceptance to adjust the census results based on the PES results If the situations in Afghanistan will allow for the conduct of PES, but may not be possible to publicly announce its results, then CSO will internally use PES results to adjust the census counts in areas where fraud exists

Lessons learned from the last experience:   which may help improve the planning and implementation of the next PES we could not conduct the PES in 1979 Population and Housing Census and after that there was no Census in Afghanistan so this is agood opportunity to learn from experiences of other countries

Thank You