Principles And Recommendations For Population And Housing Censuses Revision 3

Since its early years, the United Nations has issued a series of international recommendations on population and housing censuses under the title “Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses”. These publication series, which are based on good national practices in census taking, are widely used by national statistical offices and census officials in countries throughout the world in planning and carrying out population and housing censuses, as well as other related data collection activities, particularly demographic and and socio-economic surveys. The recommendations provide guidance on the main characteristics of population and housing censuses, general material on census methodology, planning, and operations, and more detailed guidance on the content of censuses, in terms of topics for population and also housing. These series are currently revised to assist countries in preparing for the 2020 round of censuses by taking into account changes in methodology, technology, as well as the need for better data dissemination and utilization.

Since its early years, the United Nations has issued a series of international recommendations on population and housing censuses under the title "Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses".

The population and housing census is part of an integrated national statistical system, which may include other censuses (for example, agriculture), surveys, registers and administrative files. It provides, at regular intervals, the benchmark for population count at national and local levels. For small geographical areas or sub-populations, it may represent the only source of information for certain social, demographic and economic characteristics. For many countries the census also provides a solid framework to develop sampling frames. This publication represents one of the pillars for data collection on the number and characteristics of the population of a country.

The publication is an international standard on the design and operation of an efficient and accurate vital statistics system at national level. It provides guidelines on collection, compiling and disseminating vital statistics. More specifically it contains (a) basic principles for a vital statistics system; (b) uses of vital statistics and civil registration records; (c) topics to be covered in a vital statistics system; (d) sources of vital statistics and how they function; (e) quality assurance in the vital statistics system and (f) strategies in improving civil registration and vital statistics systems in countries. It also informs policy makers and the general public on the importance of vital statistics and hence further improving the vital statistics system.

This publication provides an overview of census and survey data editing methodology. It reviews the advantages and disadvantages of manual and computer-assisted editing, and presents, in detail, procedures and techniques for editing census data at various stages of processing. Technical considerations, particularly those pertinent to programming, are covered in the annexes.

"The introduction describes the census process, the various types of errors that occur in a census and the fundamentals of census editing. Subsequent chapters present procedures and techniques for editing census data at various stages of processing. Although this handbook focuses on editing for population and housing censuses, many of the concepts and techniques also apply to survey operations."--Introd.

The Handbook provides guidance on the measurement of economic characteristics in population censuses, based on relevant experiences of countries, with a particular focus on the questions used and the requirements for processing of responses. The Handbook is intended to provide census planners with a variety of approaches to assess the questions and methods of collecting economic characteristics used in their national census, as they evaluate the performance in the past decade and plan for the 2010 round of censuses (2005-2014). Users of census results may also find the present text useful when evaluating the quality of census results.