First Thoughts on Editing in Mixed Modes in the 2011 Census Heather Wagstaff and Ruth Wallis Methodology Directorate Office for National Statistics, U.K.

Overview The presentation is structured as follows:  Overview of 2001 Census Editing Process  Challenges for editing in mixed modes  Integration of processing streams  Concluding remarks

Overview: 2001 Census Capture and Coding Capture and coding operation outsourced:  scanning and capture by OMR / OCR  preliminary univariate edits applied  Statistics Canada ACTR for complex coding  integrated quality assurance system  207 million tick boxes and 1.1 billion characters sent for keyers for correction

Overview: Lessons Learned Overall the 2001 Census editing process was a success However, unexpected scanning & electronic capture errors:  almost 48k duplicate individual records  almost 3.3 million spurious individuals  households containing only children

Internet Capture: Validity vs Legibility Between mode combinations of validity and legibility: Mode effect: legibility between paper/internet responses Hence, internet capture totally eradicates scanning error

Internet Capture: Automated Routing Evaluation of the 2001 Census responses found:  a number of respondents had difficulties understanding the requirements and did not follow the instructions. Routing can be automated on-line:  questions that are ‘not applicable’, should not be presented to the respondent  but respondents should be aware that they have skipped through the questions.

Internet Capture: Radar Buttons On-line interface provides opportunity to apply edits in real time  radar buttons negate multi-ticked responses Useful on-line messages for editing to:  highlight item non-response or partial item non- response;  highlight values outside of a pre-specified range for numeric responses; or  simply ask for confirmation of implausible values.

Internet Capture: Personalisation UK Census form fillers record names three times:  listing grid; relationship matrix; person questions.  2001 evaluation found large number records with inconsistent ordering  personalisation maintains consistency of ordering  ‘How is Mary’s related to John’  improve quality and reduce edits

Internet Capture: Complex Coding Concerned with accuracy and consistency. Must ensure:  individual coders assign the same code over time and  coders assign the same codes as each other.

Internet Capture: Complex Coding Standard Occupational Classification Consistency conceptually difficult for on-line capture

Integration of Responses Integration process is challenging and possibilities are dependent on:  formatting of the Internet form and questions  functionality, inc editing, applied in the interface Two broad options, if:  raw tick and text: then integrate immediately after scanning and prior to recognition; or if  fully captured & simple coded: then integrate immediately after recognition and prior to edit

Concluding Remarks ONS aim for internet capture is to:  improve response & reduce respondent burden  improve data quality  deliver efficiency gains by reducing the volume of subsequent editing But there is still much work to do to:  understand the key drivers and levels of bias; and  develop strategies to mitigate against it.