1. First Thoughts on Editing in Mixed Modes in the 2011 Census Heather Wagstaff and Ruth Wallis Methodology Directorate Office for National Statistics, U.K.

2. Overview The presentation is structured as follows:  Overview of 2001 Census Editing Process  Challenges for editing in mixed modes  Integration of processing streams  Concluding remarks

3. Overview: 2001 Census Capture and Coding Capture and coding operation outsourced:  scanning and capture by OMR / OCR  preliminary univariate edits applied  Statistics Canada ACTR for complex coding  integrated quality assurance system  207 million tick boxes and 1.1 billion characters sent for keyers for correction

4. Overview: Lessons Learned Overall the 2001 Census editing process was a success However, unexpected scanning & electronic capture errors:  almost 48k duplicate individual records  almost 3.3 million spurious individuals  households containing only children

5. Internet Capture: Validity vs Legibility Between mode combinations of validity and legibility: Mode effect: legibility between paper/internet responses Hence, internet capture totally eradicates scanning error

6. Internet Capture: Automated Routing Evaluation of the 2001 Census responses found:  a number of respondents had difficulties understanding the requirements and did not follow the instructions. Routing can be automated on-line:  questions that are ‘not applicable’, should not be presented to the respondent  but respondents should be aware that they have skipped through the questions.

7. Internet Capture: Radar Buttons On-line interface provides opportunity to apply edits in real time  radar buttons negate multi-ticked responses Useful on-line messages for editing to:  highlight item non-response or partial item non- response;  highlight values outside of a pre-specified range for numeric responses; or  simply ask for confirmation of implausible values.

8. Internet Capture: Personalisation UK Census form fillers record names three times:  listing grid; relationship matrix; person questions.  2001 evaluation found large number records with inconsistent ordering  personalisation maintains consistency of ordering  ‘How is Mary’s related to John’  improve quality and reduce edits

9. Internet Capture: Complex Coding Concerned with accuracy and consistency. Must ensure:  individual coders assign the same code over time and  coders assign the same codes as each other.

10. Internet Capture: Complex Coding Standard Occupational Classification Consistency conceptually difficult for on-line capture

11. Integration of Responses Integration process is challenging and possibilities are dependent on:  formatting of the Internet form and questions  functionality, inc editing, applied in the interface Two broad options, if:  raw tick and text: then integrate immediately after scanning and prior to recognition; or if  fully captured & simple coded: then integrate immediately after recognition and prior to edit

12. Concluding Remarks ONS aim for internet capture is to:  improve response & reduce respondent burden  improve data quality  deliver efficiency gains by reducing the volume of subsequent editing But there is still much work to do to:  understand the key drivers and levels of bias; and  develop strategies to mitigate against it.