1. International Standards and Contemporary Technologies
Quality Assessment of the Population and Housing Census 2014 Republic of Moldova
Supported by UNFPA Moldova and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2020 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
International Standards and Contemporary Technologies
Tbilisi, April 2018

2. Summary Introduction Post Enumeration Survey (PES) Results
Problems and challenges faced
Conclusions

3. Evaluation of the quality – support from the UNFPA and SDC
General issues
Population and Housing Census 2014 (PHC 2014) – 12 – 25 May 2014
PHC 2014 – second Census after Independence and the first PHC
Traditional Census. The reference period – 12th May 2014 at a.m
Evaluation of the quality:
Post Enumeration Survey
Administrative data – electricity data
Evaluation of the quality – support from the UNFPA and SDC
The first PES
Residents from residential dwelling from the territory under control of the Goverment
No previous experience of the staff
Limited human resources
Decision to conduct the PES – 3 months before Census

4. PES PES - aim Coverage evaluation Content evaluation
Evaluation of PHC procedures
Evaluation of EAs delineation

5. Independency
PES – was led by Statistical Methods Unit and Social Statistics Department
Totally independent from Census operations
PHC fieldwork was completed and Census material was collected
Best Census enumerators – assigned to different EAs
Only PES team knew in advance the sampled EAs

6. PES – data collection I Mobile teams’ distribution
90 enumerators grouped in 9 mobile teams
Average load per team – 10 EAs
Each team - coordinated by 1 supervisor
Supervisors – NBS staff
Daily progress reporting to head office
16 – 29 July

7. PES – data collection II
Gender
Birth date
Civil status
Variabiles to define resident status
Education level
Relation to the head
Questionnaire - simplified version of PHC one:

8. PES – data processing C MAKSA C MARCSA C MARX CARL MARX CARLA MARCS
CARLA MARCSA
CARLA MARSCA
CARLA MARXA
CARLO-MARCSA
K MARCSA
K MARKSA
KARL MARX
KARLA MARKSA
KARLA MARXA
MARCSA
Started after 23 months of data collection
Manual data entry in CSPro application
Double data entry
Need of standardization for string variables – up to 53 different spellings for the same street name

9. PES – data linkage I Lack of unique persons’ ID
Used variables: name, address, date of birth, sex and household head
First attempt – deterministic method – 7 months of work without acceptable results
Probabilistic method – using RELAIS – 4 months of work
Model used – Fellegi-Sunter

10. at the circumscriptie level (the third level) – 10.1%
PES – data linkage II
at the EA level %
at the country level – 0.6%
at the section level (the second level in PHC data collection hierarchy) – 6.1%
at the circumscriptie level (the third level) – 10.1%
at the locality level (the lowest level of administrative division in the Republic of Moldova) – 2.1%
at the raion level (the first level of administrative organization) – 0.9%

11. Electricity data (GNF) - characteristics
Owner – private company
Monthly consumption per dwelling/household, in kW
Analyzed period – one year before Census
Aim – estimation of over-coverage
Limited number of variables for data linkage – name and address

12. Estimation methodology
assessment of the under-coverage (under-coverage rate)
assessment of the over-coverage (over-coverage rate)
estimation of the true population
estimation of the coverage indicators (census omission, erroneous inclusion and net undercounts and rates)
Dual System Estimation

13. 2.7% of non-resident were enumerated
The main results
11.8% of residents were not covered (app. 302 thousand residents). Biggest under-coverage rate – Chisinau city (43.6%)
2.7% of non-resident were enumerated
Estimated residents’ number:
by PHC – 2562 thousands persons
by PES – 2824 thousands persons
The number for Chisinau city was corrected from to thousands persons

14. The net undercount rate

15. Content quality indicators
Variables
Rate of agreement, (%)
Sex
97.8
Age, 10 years group range
96.7
Marrital status
88.8
Education level
57.4
Presence of person in the household
91.8
Persons abroad
95.1

16. Problems and challenges of the PES
Limited time to proper design and conduct PES (no pilot)
No any previous experience
Very limited staff
Unknown budget at the moment when decision was taken
Manual preparation of the sample frame
Missing addresses in rural area and low quality maps
Challenges determined by using of mobile teams
No reconciliation visits
The limits of some EAs were changed during data collection. For others the IDs were changed
The probabilistic linkage - done by only two persons during 4 months, working 12 hours a day

17. Problems in using of admin data
Few variables available for data linkage (name and address)
Non updated names of the persons
Only name of the owner is mentioned in the database
Various spellings of the same address
The electricity data territorial identifier doesn’t correspond to the official administrative division of the country
Unusual values in the database

18. Problems in PHC 2014 identified through PES
The delineation of EAs was done mainly based on the list of dwellings and not on the map – some problems in EAs identification
Maps were of poor quality (with orthophoto in black and white)
No EAs database – info was kept into different Excel files. Duplications of EAs IDs
For some EAs - limits were changed during the data collection
Manual data entry – no control over persons’ ID between questionnaires

19. Conclusions and recommendations
Preparation for the next PHC and PES should start earlier with detailed and adequate planning of human, technical and financial resources
Dedicated human resources should be allocated for PES
The preparation of the fieldwork (mapping, address system, methodology for EAs delineation, GIS) should start immediately
EAs delineation should be done using GIS technologies at the address point level
It is highly recommended to include the reconciliation visits as the phase of the PES in the initial planning
For the assessment of over-coverage it can be also used other alternative sources (e.g. Labor Force Survey);
A system of daily monitoring for both PHC and PES should be developed

20. Thank you! Valentina Istrati Lilian Galer Head, Demographic Statistics
and Population Census Division
Lilian Galer
Head, Statistical Methods Section