Home > 2011 Census questionnaire update: additional testing planned June 2009
2011 Census questionnaire update: additional testing planned June 2009
Following the publication of the White Paper ‘Helping to shape tomorrow’ in December 2008 ONS is responding
to some concerns raised and has identified a small number of issues for further investigation and evidence
gathering. Additional development and testing of the questions about student addresses, religion and citizenship
is taking place, along with further testing of the ethnic group question.
-
Religion: the new religion question being tested asks ‘Which of these best describes you?’ with no
changes to the ‘No religion’ and pre-designated religion tick-boxes. This is in response to concerns
that the recommended question ‘what is your religion?’ will lead to people identifying with a religion
when they have only a loose affiliation and that such information will not be best suited to the needs
of census users.
-
Citizenship: in the citizenship question, ONS is reconsidering whether to use the word ‘passport’ or
‘citizenship’. The concern is that with the new migration questions - intention to stay and year of
arrival - a question on passports could be seen as a potential barrier to response.
-
Student addresses: further consideration is being given to using the second residence question to
collect a student’s term time address from their parents at their ‘home’ address. This is being
considered as a possible source for helping to understand the number and location of students that could
be used within the Quality Assurance of the Census population estimates. Students are a group that were
difficult to count in 2001 and this may be exacerbated in 2011 as Census day, 27 March 2011, falls
outside of term time in some universities.
-
Ethnic group: ONS is also carrying out testing to evaluate the performance of an additional tick-box in
the ethnicity question, to collect information on people identifying as ‘Kashmiri’. A Kashmiri tick-box
already scored highly in the ONS prioritisation exercise.
This further question testing will be completed by August in order to allow final decisions to be made on
these outstanding issues before the Census Order is laid before Parliament in autumn 2009.
Additional questionnaire testing planned.