Census roundup
Not necessarily endorsed by me, but many of these people do know what they are talking about.
- Initial reporting: Herald, Stuff, One News, Spinoff
- RNZ in more depth from Kate Newton
- With reference to the UK experience, at Stuff
- Len Cook at Newsroom The first request New Zealanders must have about these aspirational Statistics NZ changes is of transparency.
- Data Sovereignty and surveillance concerns from Māori scholars (RNZ, initially from The Conversation)
- Science Media Centre: diverse experts with varying views
- StatsNZ Future Census Evaluation Panel
I do also want to emphasize that no-one expert thinks this is a proposal to stop collecting data for the government. Administrative data already marks when you are born or die, when you enter or leave New Zealand, when you pay taxes or go to school or get health care. This information is more reliably and rapidly collected administratively than in the Census. What we risk losing is not that, but other things.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
I don’t know that administration data is collected more reliably. Certainly health data is asked of people at a time when they are often unwell and stressed. I suspect some parts of it are filled in by staff, based on their best guess, on the basis of expediency.
6 months ago
There’s a quality/certainty tradeoff here. I’m not saying the information in the health data is more accurate — the Census data is almost certainly more accurate if it’s collected —
but I think the health system does a lot better than 90% at registering (a) that a person was there, and (b) which person it was (NHI or name and address).
6 months ago
The MoH connected the NZ Health Survey where they had name and address to an NHI and for the 2018/19 survey there was an unmatch rate of 7%.
I think they matched it on name and address only but I can’t remember the exact details.
I would expect the unmatch rate to be higher in those not in the sample frame, those who refused to be in the survey and those who didn’t want their data used for further research.
Plus, they had perfect information for address in the survey because they surveyed face to face in the home.
So, I could be pushed to agree with 90% but I wouldn’t go a lot higher.
6 months ago
The Health Service User population for 2022 is 2.4% different to the estimated resident population for (June) 2022 overall. But it’s pretty bad for Maori (-8.5%) and Pacific peoples (9.7%). (All prioritised ethnicity).
And that’s likely to be a good year because people were getting vaccinated for COVID i.e. people who wouldn’t ordinarily touch health services were getting jabs.
I would say that the census is more correct but I have heard people argue the other way.
6 months ago