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U K c e n s u s 2 0 1 1 – t h e l a s t ? In Britain, Francis Maude has described the 2011 census as “wasteful”. He is the Cabinet minister in charge of it. For

the future he is examining using databases from credit check agencies, Royal Mail and councils instead of a census.

Save our census, says Jack Miles – but offers an alternative to its present form.

“Invasive”. “Intrusive”. “Unsuitable”. Those are some of the words members of the current gov-ernment have used to describe the forthcoming 2011 census. Francis Maude declared that 2011 may be the last time the census is carried out – and he is the man charged with carrying it out. He believes that the cost of it – estimated at £482 million – is unjustified. But he has also attacked it as inaccurate and slow – “out of date almost before it has been done”. For the future, “there are, I believe, ways of doing this which will provide better, quicker information, more frequently and cheaper”, he has said.

Last time around, in 2001, nearly 400 000 people filled in the box for “religious affiliation” with the word “Jedi”. About 1.5 million house-holds failed to fill in their forms at all. To them, and even to the more normal respondent who is not a fan of Star Wars, the end of the census would be relatively meaningless. However, to the householder whose day job is quantitative researcher, or market researcher, or statistician (and who doubtless fills in his or her form prop-erly) – or indeed to anyone who uses demographic data – the end of the census could be seen as a monumental event. Perhaps it is up to us to save it. I can already hear non-researchers (and a few Cabinet Office ministers) asking “why?” and “how?” Let us start with the why.

Functionality

When any statistician or researcher receives a demand for a sample to be representative of demographic proportions, where does he or she go? Most immediately view the data of the last census to find out the demographic proportions required to meet the sampling criteria. Further, census data provides an instant and accessible overview of the UK population at the click of a few buttons, giving demographic and economic insights along the way, something few research-ers would want to sacrifice.

The saviour – Census 2.0?

As researchers, we should obviously want to pre-serve the life of the census. Which makes it only fair that we should suggest ways of making this possible. The modern census has, methodological-

ly speaking, progressed somewhat since its incep-tion in 1801. It has advanced from headcounts to postal questionnaires. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that we are still applying 20th- or even 19th-century methods to a 21st-century problem. The internet has made barely a dent on census techniques. The questionnaires are still printed on paper, delivered by post, filled in by hand, and returned again by post. And there are some 23 million of those questionnaires, since that is the number of UK households. Other industries have been moving as fast and as far as they can to shift as much of their workload as possible to the internet – especially the parts that use paperwork (in huge quantities), and staff, and cost money. Given the furore about its cost, surely it is now time to consider using the modern, cost-efficient data collection abilities of the internet, thus spawning Census 2.0.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) tells us that 70% of UK households now have access to the internet. This means that potentially 70% of households can be reached at a vastly reduced cost. This huge saving comes from cutting the expense of producing the paper questionnaires, delivering the document to every household then back to the census office, and entering the paper-based data into computers. There is a reduced spend in all of these labour- and time-consuming processes. Why not use the internet instead? Critics will argue that online data col-lection will not capture the information of the entire population. This is certainly true; but even if the missing 30% of the population had to be chased in the traditional manner, collecting full-population census data would still be far more cost-efficient. If 70% of households provided their details online, only 7 million postal (or

A census enumerator taking details from a gypsy family for the Dutch census of 1925

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perhaps telephone?) questionnaires would have to be administered instead of 23 million.

In addition to being cost-efficient, it is worth noting that internet data collection is time-efficient as well. It currently takes about a year to publish census data. Francis Maude’s criticism that it is out of date before it is has been done is fundamentally true. But the internet would dra-matically speed this process up. Online methods can instantly capture data without having to go through a drawn-out data entry process. Rather than regretting the loss of a universal census, researchers might find themselves welcoming the arrival of an up-to-date one.

The second key criticism of the current cen-sus is that the information it collates has limited longevity. Here again the ONS could learn from the experience of others. In the world of market research, using online communities has recently experienced an upsurge in popularity. Having

collected data for the entire population, would it not be possible to create online communities for all the UK counties or regions? Many millions of Facebook users update their pages daily. Surely it would be possible to create a census com-munity whose members were willing to update their census page annually, or biannually, or even every month or so? This would, in theory, provide far more up-to-date information on the population, albeit based on a sample. Again one can argue it would be more beneficial to have up-to-date information based on a sample than to have outdated information derived from the entire population. And to draw valid information from samples when the whole population is not available is far from impossible. Indeed, isn’t that what statisticians do?

Collecting data more frequently would add to an already stretched census budget. However, the use of the internet in creating Census 2.0

would make it far more cost-efficient than the current census; the funds saved on data collec-tion could be used for more frequent updating. It would almost certainly save money overall.

Embracing online data collection and ele-ments of web-based research techniques within the census could eradicate the two current major criticisms that are made of it – cost and the longevity of the data set collected. It would make the publication of the information col-lected a speedier process. The real challenge will lie in convincing critics of the census and online research that this is a worthwhile step to take. We need the census. Let us show how it can continue – because we do not need it fossilised.

Jack Miles is a quantitative researcher at Northstar Research Partners UK (www.northstarmarke-tresearch.co.uk)

U S c e n s u s : u n s u s t a i n a b l e ?

The 2000 US national census cost $16 per person counted. The 2010 census came in considerably and commendably under budget; it was able to return $1.6 billion of unspent and contingency funding to the Treasury. Yet it still cost $14 bil-lion – which is $47 per person counted. These rising costs are “almost certainly unsustainable” says Robert Groves, Director of the Census Bu-reau. It means that the next US census will have to be different.

The 2000 census forms were available online for download and submission; in 2010, they were not. Why this apparent backward step away from technology? “That decision was taken before I arrived” says Groves. “The change was made be-cause of fears about security.” But the decision, he says, did not contribute to the great cost of the 2010 census. “The major cost is not printing the forms, or distributing them; it is in physically chasing up the households who do not fill in or send them back. And that would not have been reduced by using the internet.”

It is doorstepping the non-respondent house-holds that costs the money. His enumerators make six attempts, when all else has failed the last of them trying to extract basic information from neighbours, before giving up. Census data for roughly 22 percent of US households that did not reply by mail were based on such outside

interviews, Groves said. So how did they manage to come in under budget? “To be fair, about $800 million of the savings was due to good fortune. That’s how much we set aside for contingencies such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, or a mas-sive H1N1 flu pandemic. Each of these events might have made it more difficult to hire folks, or to gain cooperation. And we benefitted from the recession, in that high-quality people were willing to work for us as enumerators.” There were 635,000 of them. “They put in the hours; they worked more efficiently than we expected; they made our field processes go smoothly.”

But there were more proactive reasons also. “We benefited because we could reduce the number of door-to-door questioning: 72 percent of households returned the mailed questionnaires, up from 69 percent last time. That saved us $650 million in door-to-door costs.” In an era of de-clining trust in governments and government in-stitutions he has reason to be pleased with that 72 percent figure. How was it achieved? “The American people really came through, exceeding our estimates on the mail return of question-naires.” But again there were reasons for which Groves himself was more directly responsible. “We did extensive advertising – and it was tar-geted advertising.” For which read imaginative advertising. Some red-neck attitudes – spread

via the blogosphere – were deeply against filling in census forms, on grounds of libertarianism, government interference, and general prejudice against form-filling. The census sponsored a NASCAR stock-racing car: NASCAR racing is well-patronised by that group. “We were criticised for the amount we spent on advertising; but I believe it has more than recovered its costs in higher return rates of questionnaires.”

“In Spanish-speaking areas we sent out bi-lingual forms; we estimate that that increased return rates in those areas by about 2%. And for about 40 million households we sent out a re-placement form a couple of weeks after the first mailed form.” The number of replacement forms was limited mainly by the form-printing capacity of the United States.

“We live in a short-attention-span age” he says; the 2010 form was simplified to make it take no more than ten minutes to fill in. “It is the shortest form in my lifetime. We are close to the edge in terms of usefulness. I can’t imagine dropping any more questions from the form that would keep us compliant with the laws” – laws that oblige a population count every ten years in order, among other things, fairly to apportion seats in the House of Representatives.

The Census is known to undercount, the bias being against poorer households in de-

The United States is a year ahead of Britain and Canada in its ten-year census cycle. Robert Groves, head of the US

Census Bureau, described the 2010 census at the RSS annual conference. Julian Champkin caught up with him.