census response rate under 75%

[CharityShopChic]

Lots of comment on Twitter about why the response rate in Scotland is lower than it was in England/Wales/N Ireland last year. As someone who looks at old census returns every day of the week, this is very bad news for people 100 years in the future who want to investigate their family history.

Reluctance to complete census is not new, every census there are people who avoid being recorded for whatever reason. But not 25% of the population! 35% in Glasgow city haven't filled it in.

My take on what has gone wrong:

1. 10 years ago we were all watching terrestrial TV more, seeing the adverts. Now we're all streaming on netflix and not seeing the reminders.


2. Politicisation - older censuses asked things like "where were you born" which most of us can answer. Now it's all about how you define your national identity which is a woolly concept and linked to your politics.


3. Intrusive questions about sexual orientation and trans history.


4. General lack of trust in the government and doubts over what they are going to do with the information.


5. Difficulties getting hold of hard copies for people who don't do the census online.

Going digital will have excluded a lot of people and it wasn't obvious enough that you could get a paper copy.
I was in our local library and overheard an elderly man who'd brought his letter in and was asking for help. The library staff were directing him to citizens advice when I stepped in and said he could phone the number and request a paper copy. No-one seemed to know that🤷🏼‍♀️

I found the questions about employment intrusive - I don't see why anyone needs to know who my employer is. I do understand the impact on future researchers - I've recently been doing a lot of family history searching and the old census returns are useful and fascinating.

I also agree that the push to complete online is a disincentive. I work for a library authority and our staff have spent a lot of time recently helping people to complete the return which has been challenging for staffing

Same hear readsalot a lot of the questions I thought were very nosey and I wanted to know why they needed to know and what the data could be used for - it's a bit more than name, address, family members at same address and occupation these days!

I thought the questions really intrusive. I understand why statistics about (biological) sex and age are useful - it helps for planning for services. But I don't really understand why the government needs to know my sexuality.

Other factors that won't have helped the completion rate is that a lot of local services are either patchy or overcrowded in the wake of Covid - eg my local library has been a testing site for ages, so not a place to seek help with the census and places like Citizens Advice Bureau are really busy right now.

Agree, felt much more in depth than my understanding of what a census has traditionally been and I took some of questions to be politically motivated. Does anyone know how the questions differed to the census down south last year?

I found the questions very intrusive too. Also not happy about the political bias.

Also what's the point given that allowing folk to self identify their sex will render the data effectively meaningless for planning purposes.

Hopefully it will make it screamingly obvious just how few people identify as anything other than the the sex they were born, and as a result they might stop banging on about it for five frickin minutes.

I wanted to submit it as I spent 15 years outwith the uk and future generations will be curious about gaps. But some of the questions were fucking weird and I was torn between being deliberately obtuse - and providing answers for family I will never meet.

although, I received a couple of twattish letters threatening me with a fine for non-completion - so I’d assume they’ve not got a fucking clue who’s returned and who hasn’t.

I did dull mine in, but it was unnecessarily complicated. I have 4 kids, and it felt like I had to answer a million questions about exactly how everyone in the household is related to each other. I do get that a lot of families just are complicated these days, but it took bloody ages (I think I split the form over 3 days!)

I only persevered because I thought it was a legal requirement? What will happen to those 25% who didn't complete it?

I'm another one who has completed it and had 2 letters threatening a fine if I don't complete it 🤷🏼‍♀️

The BBC are reporting that they expect the census deadline to be extended - I'm guessing the threatening advertising campaign isn't cutting it, and the reality is with only 75% responding the data won't be good enough to be useful. They're also not realistically going to fine 100s of thousands of people for non-compliance - quite apart from the issues of how would they prove you didn't complete it, the highest levels of non-responders are in the poorest areas, and there is a cost of living crisis already. It would be a political nightmare for them!

Personally I think their biggest problem was making the default an online system that lots people struggle to get working (if they can get online at all, which apparently lots of older, poorer people can't). Things like it not accepting your place of work and not letting you continue without it, so you have to be extremely motivated and/or lie to proceed (and lying is apparently an offence). It just doesn't seem to have been very well implemented. The excessively intrusive nature of the questions and pissing people off with making sex a matter of opinion and restricting the 'allowable' nationalities, plus doing it a year later than the rest of the UK just to be different, probably haven't helped either. I'm not sure giving it an extra 4 weeks will do much to solve these issues tbh.

Personally I think their biggest problem was making the default an online system that lots people struggle to get working (if they can get online at all, which apparently lots of older, poorer people can't)

That's my thought too but I'm interested in the difference between England and Wales census last year. Presumably they have similar demographics but had higher return rate?
Was theirs online as default too, with the fact you could get paper copy not really advertised or promoted?

That does seem to be true @CuddlyCactus Flicking through the questions they appear to be similar too, although don't go quite as far as the Scottish ones. Perhaps the difference is the way it was implemented/underlying online system? I'm guessing that since we have done our own thing and not joined in with the UK census, we had our own special system made too - perhaps it just wasn't done as well. Was there more scope for free text in the UK one maybe?

I have to say I hadn't realised that the UK one was mostly online, but it does make me wonder why we couldn't join it with it 'cos COVID when the rest of the UK managed just fine. £138 million it has apparently cost us to do our own thing.

Agree that the default of online is problematic - it isnt just older people who are not digitally connected.

Also think that the length, number of questions and the intrusiveness of many of the questions is another barrier. In my limited and unscientific experience of getting people to respond to surveys/complete forms - the shorter and quicker the better!

Also agree that fining people for non compliance would look really heavy handed

It really is a huge gulf between completion in Scotland vs rUK doesn't it? Cybernats seem determined to blame Unionists wanting to stick it to the SG, but the areas with the most non-compliance are SNP strong-holds so this theory doesn't really hold up. As much as I sympathise with the position, I also find it hard to believe that a full quarter of the population are so pissed off with the SG that they'd risk a fine. There are lots of stories on Twitter about people submitting online (and getting confirmation) but it not going through, and then having to do it again, so I'm starting to think the most likely explanation is an online system that simply isn't up to the task. People actually did complete the census but the system is so shit it hasn't always been recorded, and because they already did, they ignore the threatening letters and adverts about it. Let's face it, it wouldn't be the first time the SG spent millions on a different IT system to the rUK for no obvious reason, only for it to be fatally flawed would it? They haven't exactly got a glowing record of competence in government.

Well apparently only 2 people were prosecuted for not filling in the census in 2011 @WalkerWalking so the short answer to what will happen is probably nothing.

There were quite a lot of questions that didn't seem to have any end point. I.e , if you answered them, there didn't seem to be anything that would come out of it. And yes, also far too much emphasis on gender/sexuality🙄

Filled it in online the first day the site was available to do so, in large part because I thought if I waited the site was likely to run into issues further down the line. It took no more than 10 minutes, accepted my submission with no issue, and I thought it was all rather straightforward and simple.

I think that by far and away the biggest reason for 25%+ still not responded is clearly the fact that it was an online only endeavour unless you specifically requested a paper copy. Not having a physical reminder lying around will be enough to let a significant proportion simply forget altogether, and while I don't blame the SG at all for conducting an exercise like this online in 2022, there will still be an element of the population that either can't or won't do this electronically.

It's no real surprise either that the largest proportion of non-responders are in the area with the greatest population and population density, as that will be where the preponderance of people who do not have English as a first language are, and also the most impoverished, disengaged, disenfranchised, and least able to actually access an online census. As much as Glasgow is dominated by the SNP politically, it's also where the largest concentration of anti-SNP people will be concentrated, so if there is an element who are determined not to fill it out to make a political point, then Glasgow is where I'd expect that to actually register. A few hundred objections in the Borders or Aberdeenshire wouldn't necessarily stand out because it's too small a number to notice, but a few thousand in Glasgow would because it'll equate to a measurable percentage.

But @XDownwiththissortofthingX England and Wales also have all the issue you mention (ok not snp but Boris and Co!)
I'm still interested in why Scotlands rate of return is so much lower🤷🏼‍♀️

Did they have better advertising, easier availability of paper copies, IT system worked better, population trusts Gov more with personal information, did they have less questions or less intrusive?

Interesting questions @CuddlyCactus. Many years ago there were people employed to go and collect the census forms - does this still happen ?

Again in my limited experience of trying to get feedback it always seems to be easier if you stand there smiling and saying "if you could just take a wee minute to let us know what you thought" than sending follow up emails

Have to say I didnt answer some questions because I thought they were intrusive. I also think the fining people is just nonsense - that only works if you know someone has the means to pay so its an empty threat.

I don't think it's a political statement. Or that's not the main reason. If you look at the areas sitting above a 80% response rate here

www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2022/call-for-census-completion-as-local-response-rates-are-published

it's East Ren, East Dunbartonshire, Aberdeen, Moray, Orkney. Those are not SNP areas. It's absolutely the poorer, densely populated urban areas which are not filling it in. Good point about it only being in English - people who speak other languages have to proactively go off to work out how to access info in their own language and many won't bother.

In historical censuses they would have an enumerator who had their "patch" and whose job it was to go house to house asking people the questions and filling it in. As of 1911 literacy rates were high enough that people were trusted to fill in their own forms although the enumerator went door to door collecting the forms and knew which hadn't been completed.

There are still enumerator jobs around although they call them something fancy like coverage manager or engagement lead. The money is not brilliant and you're out schlepping around in all weathers. It's a temporary contract too. At a time where everyone is struggling to recruit what would you rather have - a permanent job in a supermarket for 20 hours a week, or work for an undetermined number of weeks chapping on peoples' doors in very rough areas asking them about their trans history?

I don't think political objection is the 'main' reason or anywhere close to it. I'd be surprised if it's more than a tiny fraction of the non-respondents so far, with the other reasons I gave being responsible for a far, far greater proportion of the returns yet to be submitted.

My point is, that even by comparison to England with Boris and Con v Lab, Scotland still has an extra layer of political polarisation driven in part by the Indi v Union issue, and also because there is a history of Sectarianism, that like it or not, still has an impact on which political parties some people will align themselves with.

Glasgow more than anywhere will have a number of people who object to anything SNP, not on policy, but because of their background and sectarian bias. That's the point. If there was anywhere in Scotland where I'd expect there to be a hardcore element that will refuse to complete a national census because of their perception that it's SNP and therefore inherently objectionable, it would be Glasgow. I'm not for a moment suggesting that this explains a 10% discrepancy or anywhere close to it, only that if it is even a factor in any way, no matter how small, then this is where I'd expect it to show.

I would agree it's not political @CharityShopChic , especially when you look at those areas with over 80% returns. Not exactly SNP strongholds

My hunch is that Scot Gov just didn't make theirs accessible enough. Other parts of UK seem to have managed to gather the info from digitally excluded households, from households with limited English (of which England have many more than we do)

I think they just didn't think it through! Not enough effort went into considering how to reach these households and make the census accessible to all

I was chatting about this on my FB the other day. My sister told me a lot of younger people she had encountered simply didn't know there was a census on at all! My son explained they don't read papers or watch TV news (they stream everything), they don't chat at bus stops because they're all plugged into earpieces listening to music or podcasts, the letters that were sent out prior looked like every other piece of meaningless bumph and went direct to recycling, older people struggled to fill in online and confused by gender questions, others didn't get the paper forms in time and thought it was "too late" to do it after the 20th, lack of Gvt ads on social media... just a huge fuck up all round.