Census vs Voluntary Survey response rate estimates

October 18, 2010 by Tracey | 2 comments

Its official!

StatCan expects a 50% response rate from the Voluntary National Household Survey and would have expected a 94% response rate from a mandatory Long-Form Census.

Read: StatCan National Household Survey: data quality

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April 10, 2012 at 5:34 am

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October 18, 2010 at 2:53 pm

Sebastien

Sebastien’s avatar

I am in favour of keeping the mandatory census long form, for several reasons.
In order to avoid the “conservatory-creationism” approach on numbers/stats, your title should perhaps reflect also the fact that Stats Can increased sampling rate (1 in 3 households compared to 1 in 5) to try to compensate the lower response rate.
Rigor, rigor, rigor.

“With a sampling rate of 1 in 3 and an anticipated response rate of 50%, approximately 16% of the Canadian population will complete the National Household Survey, compared with 19% under a mandatory census long form (i.e., sampling rate of 1 in 5 and a 94% response rate). Given its anticipated lower overall number of respondents, the National Household Survey will, in general over all domains of interest, have a sampling error that is slightly higher (worse) than would have been achieved from a mandatory long-form census. Furthermore, it is expected that the quality of estimates across domains will present more variability, with some areas potentially achieving lower sampling errors than would have been achieved through a mandatory long-form census (because of the higher sampling rate of 33%), while other areas may see substantially higher sampling errors (because of unusually low response rates on the voluntary survey). Smaller domains of interest are particularly at risk of such fluctuations.”