Tue
Aug
08
2006

Census Day

As Simon has pointed out, today is census day in Australia, and for the first time we can choose to complete it online, instead of wading our way through a pretty chunky wad of paper.
Like Simon, I completed mine ahead of time, doing it last night. With five of living here (and yes, being resident tonight, it was still quite a task.

It’s nice to see some smart scripting in the online version. So if I answer one question in a certain way, following questions that would not be relevant are blanked out.
Funny thing is though, they didn’t do that in all cases. So, even though I answered that my three sons were all children of Rob and I, the system insisted that I fill in the ancestry information for each child.

One thing I would encourage people to do:
One of the last questions is one that asks you to give permission for personal details to be released to the public in 99 years. This is a huge help to genealogical research in the future, and as all of us in my house will almost certainly be enjoying eternal life in 99 years time, we happily gave permission!

Posted by Neil, 8 August 06
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Comment

  1. I also liked that saving was automatic. Your answers were saved when you pressed ‘next’, or even went to another section of the census.

    I read the online version was also quite accessible. But heard on the radio this morning, that with screen readers able to work with the census, this is the first time visually impaired people have been able to complete the census without assistance.

    — Simon · Aug 8, 06:32 AM · #

  2. Yeah, the auto save was good… and I noticed that it was screen reader friendly too. Good to see.

    — NeilA · Aug 8, 07:23 AM · #

  3. It is strange that the census has a check box for Buddhism and Islam, but none for Christian!

    And please, any readers who are not completing the census online, spare a thought for us hard working collectors. We are required to visit each house up to 6 times [once for delivery and 5 times for collection attempts]. Can you imagine the frustration as our rate per hour goes down and down as we keep returning to collect?

    — David McKay · Aug 8, 07:53 PM · #

  4. I noticed the lack of just ‘Christian’ too – and that would have been my preference (but I didn’t want to use ‘other’ as that puts me in with the looney Jedi’s! :))
    Hard working collectors? The pay looked Ok when they were recruiting. ;-)

    — NeilA · Aug 9, 03:30 AM · #

  5. Our family also noticed the absence of ‘Christian’ as a choice in the religion question, which we, too, would have preferred. Methinks it’s probably catering to the vast bulk of people who would identify themselves as Anglican (or, more likely, C of E), Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, etc., without really understanding that these are branches of Christianity (OK, well, maybe you could argue the toss on Roman Catholicism…). That is, it’s to help those who have a social/cultural religious affiliation to have a place to tick a box. And doing it the way they have does have some potential benefit for the various denominations (if we get the data), in that we may be able to identify who is growing and who is not. The Anglican branch of Chritianity seems to be growing in Sydney, for example, and it will be interesting to see whether the census bears this out.

    Interesting sidelight: one of my daughters asked whether people have to go back o the town where they were born when it’s time to complete the census. The question made me happy.

    — Richard · Aug 9, 07:11 AM · #

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