1. 2011 Population Census in the Republic of Serbia
Snežana Lakčević
Suzana Stanojković
Technical Coordination Group / Budapest, June 2017

2. Basic information on the 2011 Census
29th census since 1834
Traditional census method
Face-to-face interview / Paper questionnaires
Six months postponed due to lack of funds
Financially supported by EU
About direct participants
Dissemination of final results started a year after finalized fieldwork
Fully in compliance with international standards

3. Contents Selection and training organized for direct participants
Use of GIS technology
Pre-enumeration
Cooperation with ethnic minorities
Communication campaign
Data processing
Dissemination

4. Selection and training organized for direct participants
Republic instructors (statisticians with experience); Selection of municipal instructors and enumerators based on uniform criteria and on impartial bases
Three-day trainings at three levels
Uniform trainings
Final selection after the test
Evaluated quality of field work of municipal instructors/enumerators
Municipal instructors are identified as the weakest link
Conceptual changes:
Longer trainings (five days; practical exercises)
Several levels of selection (interview with candidates, tests)
2021

5. Use of GIS technology Ortho-photo maps with Address register data
enabled facilitated orientation of enumerators in the field
2002
2011
2021
Use of software enabling:
Linkage of census and geo-referenced data from AR up to house number
Preparation of ortho-photo maps in electronic form
Coverage monitoring

6. Pre-enumeration Weaknesses
Primary homeless
Persons deprived of liberty
Serbian citizens working in diplomatic and consular
offices, in branch offices and other entities
Persons in military facilities
Weaknesses
Complex methodological and organizational preparatory activities (special guidelines and trainings for each of mentioned categories, special procedures for passing over materials…)
Selection of enumerators and controllers was in jurisdiction of Ministry of Foreign
Affaires, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice and welfare institutions
One-day trainings; Quality of census forms was not satisfactory
Mentioned categories will be covered by regular enumeration
Categories enumerated before official census start (before 1 October 2011) in order to ensure more complete coverage
2021

7. Cooperation with national councils of ethnic minorities
In cooperation with representatives of ethnic minorities numerous preparatory and implementing activities were carried out during the Census course
120 representatives of national councils were associated members of Census commissions (observers)
Census forms were translated in 8 languages of ethnic minorities + English (Multilingual collection)
Methodological guidelines, Organizational manual and Guidelines for enumerators were translated and provided in Albanian language
Questions on ethnicity, religious affiliation and mother tongue were open-type

8. Cooperation with national councils of ethnic minorities
Cooperation with National council of Roma minority
Mapping Roma settlements
About 550 additional Roma enumerators and about 150 Roma coordinators were engaged as an assistance to enumerators for enumeration in so‐called Roma settlements (substandard settlements)
Enabled better coverage and qulity of data
Joint activities aimed at strengthening mutual trust and cooperation
between the official statistics and representatives of national minorities
will be resumed
2021

9. Communication campaign
Media campaign - outsourced
Blumen group marketing agency and SORS were awarded for the successful promotion campaign
Association for economic propaganda awarded the bronze prize (2011),
IPRA Golden awards for excellence in the Public Sector category (2012),
IPRA Golden awards grand prize (2012)
Media campaign will be outsourced in 2021 Population Census
Attention will be paid to social media such as Twitter, Facebook …..
Call centre - Free telephone line for information
About calls in 50 days / 500 calls per day
Supervisors were operators / problem: excessive burden
Additional staff will be engaged and trained for work in call centre
Monitoring by supervisors
2021
2021

10. Data processing Centralized data processing
Application for material flow monitoring
Optical character recognition system (OCR)
OCR use did not help saving time, i.e. dissemination timeliness was not improved
Scanning and optical recognition lasted seven instead of four months due to some problems with the OCR system (equal use of Cyrillic and Latin scripts, using both scripts on the same form, illegible handwriting…)
Significant changes caused by implementation of new data collection
technique (CAWI and CAPI)
2021

11. Dissemination strategy
Make census data visible for users
Provide easier access to data
Goals
Dissemination channels
SORS website/Census web page
Census books in .pdf format
Excel tables
Dissemination database with metadata
Dashboards
Android application
Paper publications
More than downloads

12. Dissemination strategy
Data dissemination
30 census books
16 special publications/studies
In depth analysis of vulnerable categories (homeless, persons with disabilities, Roma people…)
Most frequent names and surnames
Census Atlas
Publication for pupils and teachers
Population projections ( )
Users’ needs are priority!
2021

13. Note for the future
All experiences and lessons learned were described in detail and documented in the Internal Study
About pages in electronic form
Covers all phases of the Census

14. Snežana Lakčević Suzana Stanojković
Acting Assistant Director for Social Statistics
Suzana Stanojković
Head of Census Methodology Group