Census Gaffe
As you know, the 2006 census was conducted last May. Population and dwelling counts were scheduled for release tomorrow, but that won't happen. Data collection in Western Canada was slower than expected. Due to the oil boom, finding people willing to accept $12/hr to collect forms was apparently challenging. Stats Can ended up way over budget and way late.
This compromised the integrity of the data collected. If you filled out the census like you should have, you will remember that you were required to provide your name...Unless you live in Western Canada that is. To save time and money, this question was skipped.
"At the end, they just said, 'We really don't care. As long as you can find out if there [are] three people that live in that house, put down Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck on it. We don't care about a name.' " (CBC Article)
Buah ah ah! That is the funniest thing I've heard in a long time (in a geeky way). It's especially funny to me as I know how much useless information is collected in surveys everyday at the expense of the respondent. Instead of asking useful information, researchers ask "interesting-to-know” information. "Interesting-to-know" is just that, interesting to know. It is usually not actionable which simply makes it useless. It's a sign of a mediocre researcher who really has no clear idea of what it is that he/she wants to find out.
If you filled out the census like you should have, you will also remember that you were asked a question for the very first time: Do you agree to have your census information made available to the public in 92 years, in other words in the year 2098? Your consent will be extremely valuable to historians and genealogists, except if you live in Western Canada. Without names, their job will be incredibly painful. Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck's census files will drive historians nuts.
10 comments:
I love the census. I got it for the first time ever last year (apparently living in apartments meant I didn't exist before last year) and I was so sad when I realized it was the short form.
I think I put my name down as well. I certainly didn't put Mickey Mouse.
I never get the long form. I hope for the long form every time and I never get it.
I filled mine out online. So no need for census takers. Didn't they have that option out West?
Smarties, Joe has a question for you totally unrelated to this. Wanna answer it? :)
You girls are so good. Stats Can loves you!
Only 18% used the Web to fill out their census. They were dissapointed with that too.
Hmm, unrelated question? Shoot!
Count me in as another census geek. Okay, as a history person I have a vested interest in it, but still, it was fun - just wished I would get the long one sometime. Hubby filled ours out online (I had computer problems for some reason trying to do it at work) - he better not have put Mickey and Minnie Mouse down or else I'll get all historical on his ass!!! :p
me too! I love the census, and as an historian it certainly helped my research over the years. However I don't see much difference in using mickey mouse as a name as opposed to some of the names an illiterate census taker from the 19th century wrote down :)
I also adore the census and the idea that we're contributing information to someone in the future. It's all so dreamy...
So, yes, count me in as a name-includer.
In 1800, the population of Canada was 65,000. Even if you had to go through 65,000 files (and I hope you’d search by city or something!), it would be much faster than 32 million files!
The guy who said that is probably a sociologist. In most cases, we're happy with aggregate data. He wasn't as considerate as I am of other disciplines... ;-) With other variables, names are also handy for record linkages.
And now, imagine that you ARE interested in Mickey Mouse's census info. How can you make sure it is the REAL Mickey Mouse? Hehe.
Alrighty, Joe is fascinated with the whole global warming issue, and they keep saying that there has been a trend over the past 5-10 years that the weather is getting progressively warmer. He wants to know from a statistical viewpoint, if 5 years is a long enough time period to be able to form an opinion as to whether or not something is in deed a trend or if it may just be part of a longer cycle?
Does that make sense? I think that was what he was wondering. This is what we discuss at the dinner table -don't we sound like a party
I filled mine out online too. I know some people had problems with the site timing out though.
I filled out the census for myself, my mom and my dad. The @#$%$@ website was bloody slow both times, and I did the two about a month apart.
Whomever the programmers are at Stats Can are wasting my tax money, they can't set up the website properly. I shouldn't have had to wait a full minute or two for each bloody page to load. (This is no exaggeration, BTW).
Here's a piece of research for those bozos: users tend to leave any site if the page takes longer than 4 seconds to load. Timeouts are even worse. No wonder they got such a low web turnout. If this had happened to Amazon, they would have gone out of business from day one.
Okay, rant over.
I, BTW, filled mine out the moment I got it in the mail.
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