Scottish census shambles

[DomesticatedZombie]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/27/snp-abandons-census-deadline-quarter-scots-fail-respond/

'Extending the window for responding raises worrying questions about data quality,” Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh, said. “In normal social surveys, there are strict quality controls on the time given to respond. “This is because people vary in how they respond, especially for opinion questions such as the several identity questions in the census. For example, how people answer the question about gender identity might vary according to whether some controversy about gender identity is in the news. The same is true of national identity and ethnic identity.” He added: “As a social statistician, I would not use census data on identity that had such an arbitrarily varying window of replying.”'

Re where they were advertised. Good question. I was actively looking for something that would tide me over till my hours increased as my main job recovered from lockdown. So I found it on a job website - can't remember which one. I think I saw it advertised in more than one site, but all online.

Apparently in 2011, when the enumerator jobs were just 10 hours a week, they were advertised in libraries etc, aimed at fit retired people, parents of young children etc.

I could be wrong, but I think they were aiming to make enumerating less like casual work this time. Possibly because last time it was paper based, but this time it's online and enumerators have to have some computer literacy. They were trying to employ fewer people, working longer hours.

25 hours is harder to fit round other work. 10 hours you could easily do on top of existing routine.

It will have been hard to recruit for that many hours on a 10 week contract. I think that’s probably why - means people won’t have been able to do that on top of their usual role and wouldn’t have appealed to retired people looking for casual work. 10 hours a week would have been more popular I suspect.

No idea why it’ll cost as much as £10m but they had employed people to manage responses, etc on fixed term contracts and apparently many of them aren’t willing or able to extend their contract to handle the extended deadline and work.

Upgraded from a shambles to a fiasco:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-61637371

'Asked why so many households had failed to fill it in, Prof Paterson said it was not clear and an inquiry should investigate.'

Gosh, why on earth would people not bother their arses to fill in a survey that asked questions based on vague feelings rather than actual real facts? I can't think.

With regards to the number of staff, I believe ScotGov thought they would need less as the vast majority of people would complete it online. I wonder how many paper copies were sent out compared to the predicted number

I don't how how the numbers of jobs advertised compared with last time, but of the enumerator jobs advertised, most remained unfilled. In my area only approx 20% of enumerator posts were filled. I gather the situation was similar throughout Scotland.

Small bonuses were being offered after the census had started to anyone who could recruit a friend/ neighbour / their cat. (Only £25, if I remember correctly).

There were boxes of unused kit; smartphones ready for non-existent enumerators etc etc.

On Saturday, Angus Robertson, the government's constitution secretary, acknowledged there were "lessons to be learned".
"Why is it that there are people who believe they have been uninformed or are underinformed about the fact that the census is taking place, despite the fact that every household has been written to on numerous occasions during the census period?" he asked.

On the doorstep, I was surprised by how many people said that they only open mail addressed to them personally; anything addressed to "The Householder" goes straight in the bin.

I spoke to many people who denied having received any of the letters, and then, when I said "They were addressed to "The Householder" said "That explains it! They'd have been binned unopened."

There were also a few people who had a stack of assorted unopened mail, and when they went through it, there were the census letters. Again, they said they only opened mail addressed to them personally immediately, anything else got added to the "look at it sometime in the future pile".

Well, an enquiry might be a good idea.