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124-506: Religion in Nuwara Eliya District (2011) The population according to the 2001 census is 703,610 of which 50.61% are Tamils of Indian origin , 40.2% are Sinhalese , 6.5% native Sri Lankan Tamils and 2.4% Sri Lankan Moors . In terms of religion,51.0% of the population are Hindu , 39.7.0 % Buddhists , 5% Roman Catholics , 2.7% Muslims and 1.5% belong to non-catholic Christian denominations. Nuwara Eliya district

248-660: A base-10 positional system. On May 25, 1577, King Philip II of Spain ordered by royal cédula the preparation of a general description of Spain's holdings in the Indies. Instructions and a questionnaire, issued in 1577 by the Office of the Cronista Mayor, were distributed to local officials in the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru to direct the gathering of information. The questionnaire, composed of fifty items,

372-544: A census for tax purposes, which was partially responsible for the development of the Zealot movement and several failed rebellions against Rome ultimately ending in the Jewish Diaspora . The Gospel of Luke makes reference to Quirinius' census in relation to the birth of Jesus ; based on variant readings of this passage, a minority of biblical scholars, including N. T. Wright , speculate that this passage refers to

496-441: A margin of error – usually defined as the radius of a 95% confidence interval for a particular statistic. One example is the percent of people who prefer product A versus product B. When a single, global margin of error is reported for a survey, it refers to the maximum margin of error for all reported percentages using the full sample from the survey. If the statistic is a percentage, this maximum margin of error can be calculated as

620-402: A census is that the population is not known, and a new estimate is to be made by the analysis of primary data. The use of a sampling frame is counterintuitive as it suggests that the population size is already known. However, a census is also used to collect attribute data on the individuals in the nation, not only to assess population size. This process of sampling marks the difference between

744-477: A clan or tribe, or by a juridical person such as a corporation, cooperative, or government agency. The holding's land may consist of one or more parcels, located in one or more separate areas or one or more territorial or administrative divisions, providing the parcels share the same production means, such as labor, farm buildings, machinery or draught animals. Historical censuses used crude enumeration assuming absolute accuracy. Modern approaches take into account

868-403: A country should be included in the population count. This is becoming more important as students travel abroad for education for a period of several years. Other groups causing problems with enumeration are newborn babies, refugees, people away on holiday, people moving home around census day, and people without a fixed address. People with second homes, because they are working in another part of

992-510: A fishing analogy can be found in "Trout, Catfish and Roach..." which won an award from the Royal Statistical Society for excellence in official statistics in 2011. Triple system enumeration has been proposed as an improvement as it would allow evaluation of the statistical dependence of pairs of sources. However, as the matching process is the most difficult aspect of census estimation this has never been implemented for

1116-489: A fixed number of the most recent periods, for example the past five days. In this example, the next calculated results will use data for five days counting backwards from the next day, namely the same data as before, but with the data from the next day included, and without the data from the sixth day before that day. However, these polls are sometimes subject to dramatic fluctuations, and so political campaigns and candidates are cautious in analyzing their results. An example of

1240-428: A historical census, which was a house-to-house process or the product of an imperial decree, and the modern statistical project. The sampling frame used by a census is almost always an address register. Thus, it is not known if there are any residents or how many people there are in each household. Depending on the mode of enumeration, a form is sent to the householder, an enumerator calls, or administrative records for

1364-471: A huge role in the supplying of news: 62 percent of US adults get news on social media. This fact makes the issue of fake news on social media more pertinent. Other evidence shows that the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories; many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them; and the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. As

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1488-500: A large city, it might be appropriate to give the average income for black males aged between 50 and 60. However, doing this for a town that only has two black males in this age group would be a breach of privacy because either of those persons, knowing his own income and the reported average, could determine the other man's income. Typically, census data are processed to obscure such individual information. Some agencies do this by intentionally introducing small statistical errors to prevent

1612-445: A larger sample, however if a pollster wishes to reduce the margin of error to 1% they would need a sample of around 10,000 people. In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls. (To get complete responses it may be necessary to include thousands of additional participators.) Another way to reduce

1736-469: A national enumeration. It would also be difficult to identify three different sources that were sufficiently different to make the triple system effort worthwhile. The DSE approach has another weakness in that it assumes there is no person counted twice (over count). In de facto residence definitions this would not be a problem but in de jure definitions individuals risk being recorded on more than one form leading to double counting. A particular problem here

1860-575: A national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson 's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the returns, The Literary Digest also correctly predicted the victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Then, in 1936 , its survey of 2.3 million voters suggested that Alf Landon would win

1984-480: A particular sample . Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals . A person who conducts polls is referred to as a pollster . The first known example of an opinion poll was a tally of voter preferences reported by the Raleigh Star and North Carolina State Gazette and

2108-526: A person who is described by the surveyor as one of the "leading candidates". This description is "leading" as it indicates a subtle bias for that candidate, since it implies that the others in the race are not serious contenders. Additionally, leading questions often contain, or lack, certain facts that can sway a respondent's answer. Argumentative Questions can also impact the outcome of a survey. These types of questions, depending on their nature, either positive or negative, influence respondents' answers to reflect

2232-433: A population and housing census – numbers of people, their distribution, their living conditions and other key data – is critical for development." This is because this type of data is essential for policymakers so that they know where to invest. Many countries have outdated or inaccurate data about their populations and thus have difficulty in addressing the needs of the population. The UNFPA said: "The unique advantage of

2356-423: A population census. A census is often construed as the opposite of a sample as it intends to count everyone in a population, rather than a fraction. However, population censuses do rely on a sampling frame to count the population. This is the only way to be sure that everyone has been included, as otherwise those not responding would not be followed up on and individuals could be missed. The fundamental premise of

2480-463: A question, with each version presented to half the respondents. The most effective controls, used by attitude researchers, are: These controls are not widely used in the polling industry. . However, as it is important that questions to test the product have a high quality, survey methodologists work on methods to test them. Empirical tests provide insight into the quality of the questionnaire, some may be more complex than others. For instance, testing

2604-407: A questionnaire can be done by: One of the criticisms of opinion polls is that societal assumptions that opinions between which there is no logical link are "correlated attitudes" can push people with one opinion into a group that forces them to pretend to have a supposedly linked but actually unrelated opinion. That, in turn, may cause people who have the first opinion to claim on polls that they have

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2728-460: A realist approach to measurement, acknowledging that under any definition of residence there is a true value of the population but this can never be measured with complete accuracy. An important aspect of the census process is to evaluate the quality of the data. Many countries use a post-enumeration survey to adjust the raw census counts. This works similarly to capture-recapture estimation for animal populations. Among census experts, this method

2852-439: A resident in one place; but the place where they happen to be on Census Day, their de facto residence , may not be the best place to count them. Where an individual uses services may be more useful, and this is at their usual residence. An individual may be recorded at a "permanent" address, which might be a family home for students or long-term migrants. A precise definition of residence is needed, to decide whether visitors to

2976-427: A sample is drawn from a large panel of volunteers, and the results are weighted to reflect the demographics of the population of interest. In contrast, popular web polls draw on whoever wishes to participate rather than a scientific sample of the population, and are therefore not generally considered professional. Statistical learning methods have been proposed in order to exploit social media content (such as posts on

3100-704: A separate registration conducted during the reign of Herod the Great , several years before Quirinius' census. The 15-year indiction cycle established by Diocletian in AD   297 was based on quindecennial censuses and formed the basis for dating in late antiquity and under the Byzantine Empire . In the Middle Ages , the Caliphate began conducting regular censuses soon after its formation, beginning with

3224-415: A significant problem if a poll is conducted too early for anyone to know about the potential candidate. A benchmark poll needs to be undertaken when voters are starting to learn more about the possible candidate running for office. A benchmark poll serves a number of purposes for a campaign. First, it gives the candidate a picture of where they stand with the electorate before any campaigning takes place. If

3348-618: A subsidiary in the United Kingdom that was almost alone in correctly predicting Labour's victory in the 1945 general election : virtually all other commentators had expected a victory for the Conservative Party , led by wartime leader Winston Churchill . The Allied occupation powers helped to create survey institutes in all of the Western occupation zones of Germany in 1947 and 1948 to better steer denazification . By

3472-479: A tracking poll that generated controversy over its accuracy, is one conducted during the 2000 U.S. presidential election, by the Gallup Organization . The results for one day showed Democratic candidate Al Gore with an eleven-point lead over Republican candidate George W. Bush . Then, a subsequent poll conducted just two days later showed Bush ahead of Gore by seven points. It was soon determined that

3596-497: Is a popular medium for the candidates to campaign and for gauging the public reaction to the campaigns. Social media can also be used as an indicator of the voter opinion regarding the poll. Some research studies have shown that predictions made using social media signals can match traditional opinion polls. Regarding the 2016 U.S. presidential election , a major concern has been that of the effect of false stories spread throughout social media . Evidence shows that social media plays

3720-453: Is called dual system enumeration (DSE). A sample of households is visited by interviewers who record the details of the household as of census day. These data are then matched to census records, and the number of people missed can be estimated by considering the number of people who are included in one count but not the other. This allows adjustments to the count for non-response, varying between different demographic groups. An explanation using

3844-467: Is common in opinion polling . Similarly, stratification requires knowledge of the relative sizes of different population strata, which can be derived from census enumerations. In some countries, the census provides the official counts used to apportion the number of elected representatives to regions (sometimes controversially – e.g., Utah v. Evans ). In many cases, a carefully chosen random sample can provide more accurate information than attempts to get

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3968-402: Is essential to international comparisons of any type of statistics, and censuses collect data on many attributes of a population, not just the number of individuals. Censuses typically began as the only method of collecting national demographic data and are now part of a larger system of different surveys. Although population estimates remain an important function of a census, including exactly

4092-469: Is interested; researchers in particular have an interest in the role of Census Field Officers (CFO) and their assistants. Data can be represented visually or analysed in complex statistical models, to show the difference between certain areas, or to understand the association between different personal characteristics. Census data offer a unique insight into small areas and small demographic groups which sample data would be unable to capture with precision. In

4216-631: Is located in the hill country of Central Province . The terrain is generally mountainous, with deep valleys. Poramadulla Central College is located in the Rikillagaskada community in Hanguranketha . Diyathilaka Central College is located in the Hanguranketha community in Hanguranketha . This Nuwara Eliya District , Central Province, Sri Lanka location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Census A census (from Latin censere , 'to assess')

4340-517: Is much more effective than traditional public opinion polling. Unlike traditional public polling, deliberative opinion polls measure what the public believes about issues after being offered information and the ability to discuss them with other voters. Since voters generally do not actively research various issues, they often base their opinions on these issues on what the media and candidates say about them. Scholars argued that these polls can truly reflect voters' feelings about an issue once they are given

4464-714: Is named after the counting of the Israelite population according to the house of the Fathers after the exodus from Egypt. A second census was taken while the Israelites were camped in the " plains of Moab ". King David performed a census that produced disastrous results. His son, King Solomon , had all of the foreigners in Israel counted. One of the world's earliest preserved censuses was held in China in AD   2 during

4588-662: Is no systematic alternative: any list used to find people is likely to be derived from census activities in the first place. Recent UN guidelines provide recommendations on enumerating such complex households. In the census of agriculture , data is collected at the agricultural holding unit. An agricultural holding is an economic unit of agricultural production under single management comprising all livestock kept and all land used wholly or partly for agricultural production purposes, without regard to title, legal form, or size. Single management may be exercised by an individual or household, jointly by two or more individuals or households, by

4712-428: Is obtained only from a subset of a population; typically, main population estimates are updated by such intercensal estimates . Modern census data are commonly used for research, business marketing , and planning, and as a baseline for designing sample surveys by providing a sampling frame such as an address register. Census counts are necessary to adjust samples to be representative of a population by weighting them as

4836-485: Is often referred to as the Bradley effect . If the results of surveys are widely publicized this effect may be magnified – a phenomenon commonly referred to as the spiral of silence . Use of the plurality voting system (select only one candidate) in a poll puts an unintentional bias into the poll, since people who favor more than one candidate cannot indicate this. The fact that they must choose only one candidate biases

4960-491: Is probability sampling and statistical theory that enable one to determine sampling error, confidence levels, and the like and to generalize from the results of the sample to the broader population from which it was selected. Other factors also come into play in making a survey scientific. One must select a sample of sufficient size. If the sampling error is too large or the level of confidence too low, it will be difficult to make reasonably precise statements about characteristics of

5084-423: Is still conducted in a similar way to the post-enumeration survey employed in a traditional census. Other countries that have a population register use this as a basis for all the census statistics needed by users. This is most common among Nordic countries but requires many distinct registers to be combined, including population, housing, employment, and education. These registers are then combined and brought up to

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5208-415: Is students who often have a term time and family address. Several countries have used a system known as short form/long form. This is a sampling strategy that randomly chooses a proportion of people to send a more detailed questionnaire to (the long form). Everyone receives the short-form questions. This means more data are collected, but without imposing a burden on the whole population. This also reduces

5332-401: Is subject to controversy. Deliberative Opinion Polls combine the aspects of a public opinion poll and a focus group. These polls bring a group of voters and provide information about specific issues. They are then allowed to discuss those issues with the other voters. Once they know more about the issues, they are polled afterward on their thoughts. Many scholars argue that this type of polling

5456-422: Is that an estimate of a trend is subject to a larger error than an estimate of a level. This is because if one estimates the change, the difference between two numbers X and Y, then one has to contend with errors in both X and Y . A rough guide is that if the change in measurement falls outside the margin of error it is worth attention. Since some people do not answer calls from strangers, or refuse to answer

5580-425: Is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given population , usually displayed in the form of statistics. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses ; other common censuses include censuses of agriculture , traditional culture, business, supplies, and traffic censuses. The United Nations (UN) defines

5704-494: The 1993 general election predicted the governing National Party would increase its majority. However, the preliminary results on election night showed a hung parliament with National one seat short of a majority, leading to Prime Minister Jim Bolger exclaiming "bugger the pollsters" on live national television. The official count saw National gain Waitaki to hold a one-seat majority and retain government. Social media today

5828-553: The Han dynasty , and is still considered by scholars to be quite accurate. The population was registered as having 57,671,400 individuals in 12,366,470 households but on this occasion only taxable families had been taken into account, indicating the income and the number of soldiers who could be mobilized. Another census was held in AD   144. The oldest recorded census in India is thought to have occurred around 330   BC during

5952-560: The Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?" The confusing wording of this question led to inaccurate results which indicated that 22 percent of respondents believed it seemed possible the Holocaust might not have ever happened. When the question was reworded, significantly fewer respondents (only 1 percent) expressed that same sentiment. Thus comparisons between polls often boil down to

6076-493: The United States was the prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 US presidential election . Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, had indicated that Dewey would defeat Truman in a landslide; Truman won a narrow victory. There were also substantial polling errors in the presidential elections of 1952, 1980, 1996, 2000, and 2016: while the first three correctly predicted

6200-613: The Wilmington American Watchman and Delaware Advertiser prior to the 1824 presidential election , showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency . Since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and the national popular vote, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually citywide phenomena. In 1916, The Literary Digest embarked on

6324-692: The nomarch , "whence he gained his living". Under the Ptolemies and the Romans several censuses were conducted in Egypt by government officials. There are several accounts of ancient Greek city states carrying out censuses. Censuses are mentioned several times in the Biblical narrative. God commands a per capita tax to be paid with the census for the upkeep of the Tabernacle . The Book of Numbers

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6448-470: The 1950s, various types of polling had spread to most democracies. Viewed from a long-term perspective, advertising had come under heavy pressure in the early 1930s. The Great Depression forced businesses to drastically cut back on their advertising spending. Layoffs and reductions were common at all agencies. The New Deal furthermore aggressively promoted consumerism, and minimized the value of (or need for) advertising. Historian Jackson Lears argues that "By

6572-412: The 19th and 20th centuries collected paper documents which had to be collated by hand, so the statistical information obtained was quite basic. The government that owned the data could publish statistics on the state of the nation. The results were used to measure changes in the population and apportion representation. Population estimates could be compared to those of other countries. By the beginning of

6696-456: The 2016 New York primary, where a news organization reports misleading primary results. Government officials argue that since many Americans believe in exit polls more, election results are likely to make voters not think they are impacted electorally and be more doubtful about the credibility of news organizations. Over time, a number of theories and mechanisms have been offered to explain erroneous polling results. Some of these reflect errors on

6820-545: The 2016 U.S. primaries, CNN reported that the Democratic primary in New York was too close to call, and they made this judgment based on exit polls. However, the vote count revealed that these exit polls were misleading, and Hillary Clinton was far ahead of Bernie Sanders in the popular vote, winning the state by 58% to 42% margin. The overreliance on exit polling leads to the second point of how it undermines public trust in

6944-437: The 20th century, censuses were recording households and some indications of their employment. In some countries, census archives are released for public examination after many decades, allowing genealogists to track the ancestry of interested people. Archives provide a substantial historical record which may challenge established views. Information such as job titles and arrangements for the destitute and sick may also shed light on

7068-463: The Conservatives neck and neck, when the actual result was a clear Conservative majority. On the other hand, in 2017 , the opposite appears to have occurred. Most polls predicted an increased Conservative majority, even though in reality the election resulted in a hung parliament with a Conservative plurality: some polls correctly predicted this outcome. In New Zealand, the polls leading up to

7192-569: The Pew Research Center in the US, in 2007, concluded that "cell-only respondents are different from landline respondents in important ways, (but) they were neither numerous enough nor different enough on the questions we examined to produce a significant change in overall general population survey estimates when included with the landline samples and weighted according to US Census parameters on basic demographic characteristics." This issue

7316-463: The UK, all census formats are scanned and stored electronically before being destroyed, replacing the need for physical archives. The record linking to perform an administrative census would not be possible without large databases being stored on computer systems. There are sometimes problems in introducing new technology. The US census had been intended to use handheld computers, but cost escalated, and this

7440-552: The United States (because the phone's owner may be charged for taking a call ), these individuals are typically excluded from polling samples. There is concern that, if the subset of the population without cell phones differs markedly from the rest of the population, these differences can skew the results of the poll. Polling organizations have developed many weighting techniques to help overcome these deficiencies, with varying degrees of success. Studies of mobile phone users by

7564-422: The actual sample is a biased version of the universe the pollster wants to analyze. In these cases, bias introduces new errors, one way or the other, that are in addition to errors caused by sample size. Error due to bias does not become smaller with larger sample sizes, because taking a larger sample size simply repeats the same mistake on a larger scale. If the people who refuse to answer, or are never reached, have

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7688-449: The answers given by respondents do not reflect their true beliefs. This may be deliberately engineered by unscrupulous pollsters in order to generate a certain result or please their clients, but more often is a result of the detailed wording or ordering of questions (see below). Respondents may deliberately try to manipulate the outcome of a poll by e.g. advocating a more extreme position than they actually hold in order to boost their side of

7812-424: The argument or give rapid and ill-considered answers in order to hasten the end of their questioning. Respondents may also feel under social pressure not to give an unpopular answer. For example, respondents might be unwilling to admit to unpopular attitudes like racism or sexism , and thus polls might not reflect the true incidence of these attitudes in the population. In American political parlance, this phenomenon

7936-584: The assumption that opinion polls show actual links between opinions is considered important. Another source of error is the use of samples that are not representative of the population as a consequence of the methodology used, as was the experience of The Literary Digest in 1936. For example, telephone sampling has a built-in error because in many times and places, those with telephones have generally been richer than those without. In some places many people have only mobile telephones . Because pollsters cannot use automated dialing machines to call mobile phones in

8060-445: The breakdown of the US population by party identification has not changed since the previous presidential election, you may underestimate a victory or a defeat of a particular party candidate that saw a surge or decline in its party registration relative to the previous presidential election cycle. Sample Techniques are also used and recommended to reduce sample errors and errors of margin. In chapter four of author Herb Asher he says,"it

8184-417: The burden on the statistical office. Indeed, in the UK until 2001 all residents were required to fill in the whole form but only a 10% sample was coded and analysed in detail. New technology means that all data are now scanned and processed. During the 2011 Canadian census there was controversy about the cessation of the mandatory long-form census; the head of Statistics Canada , Munir Sheikh , resigned upon

8308-425: The campaign know which voters are persuadable so they can spend their limited resources in the most effective manner. Second, it can give them an idea of what messages, ideas, or slogans are the strongest with the electorate. In a tracking poll responses are obtained in a number of consecutive periods, for instance daily, and then results are calculated using a moving average of the responses that were gathered over

8432-438: The census is also an important tool for identifying forms of social, demographic or economic exclusions, such as inequalities relating to race, ethics, and religion as well as disadvantaged groups such as those with disabilities and the poor. An accurate census can empower local communities by providing them with the necessary information to participate in local decision-making and ensuring they are represented. The importance of

8556-536: The census is that it represents the entire statistical universe, down to the smallest geographical units, of a country or region. Planners need this information for all kinds of development work, including: assessing demographic trends; analysing socio-economic conditions; designing evidence-based poverty-reduction strategies; monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of policies; and tracking progress toward national and internationally agreed development goals." In addition to making policymakers aware of population issues,

8680-474: The census of agriculture as "a statistical operation for collecting, processing and disseminating data on the structure of agriculture, covering the whole or a significant part of a country." "In a census of agriculture, data are collected at the holding level." The word is of Latin origin: during the Roman Republic , the census was a list of all adult males fit for military service. The modern census

8804-474: The census of agriculture for development is that it gives a snapshot of the structure of the agricultural sector in a country and, when compared with previous censuses, provides an opportunity to identify trends and structural transformations of the sector, and points towards areas for policy intervention. Census data are used as a benchmark for current statistics and their value is increased when they are employed together with other data sources. Early censuses in

8928-563: The census of agriculture, users need census data to: Although the census provides useful statistical information about a population, the availability of this information could sometimes lead to abuses, political or otherwise, by the linking of individuals' identities to anonymous census data. This is particularly important when individuals' census responses are made available in microdata form, but even aggregate-level data can result in privacy breaches when dealing with small areas and/or rare subpopulations. For instance, when reporting data from

9052-454: The census response is made by a household, indicating details of individuals resident there. An important aspect of census enumerations is determining which individuals can be counted and which cannot be counted. Broadly, three definitions can be used: de facto residence; de jure residence; and permanent residence. This is important in considering individuals who have multiple or temporary addresses. Every person should be identified uniquely as

9176-575: The central government. Differing release strategies of governments have led to an international project ( IPUMS ) to co-ordinate access to microdata and corresponding metadata. Such projects such as SDMX also promote standardising metadata, so that best use can be made of the minimal data available. Censuses in Egypt first appeared in the late Middle Kingdom and developed in the New Kingdom Pharaoh Amasis , according to Herodotus , required every Egyptian to declare annually to

9300-520: The combination of data from registers, surveys and other sources. Censuses have evolved in their use of technology: censuses in 2010 used many new types of computing. In Brazil, handheld devices were used by enumerators to locate residences on the ground. In many countries, census returns could be made via the Internet as well as in paper form. DSE is facilitated by computer matching techniques that can be automated, such as propensity score matching . In

9424-522: The country or have a holiday cottage, are difficult to fix at a particular address; this sometimes causes double counting or houses being mistakenly identified as vacant. Another problem is where people use a different address at different times e.g. students living at their place of education in term time but returning to a family home during vacations, or children whose parents have separated who effectively have two family homes. Census enumeration has always been based on finding people where they live, as there

9548-609: The country, allowing for a comparative analysis between specific regions. For example, in the United States, exit polls are beneficial in accurately determining how the state voters cast their ballot instead of relying on a national survey. Third, exit polls can give journalists and social scientists a greater understanding of why voters voted the way they did and what factors contributed to their vote. Exit polling has several disadvantages that can cause controversy depending on its use. First, these polls are not always accurate and can sometimes mislead election reporting. For instance, during

9672-446: The dwelling are accessed. As a preliminary to the dispatch of forms, census workers will check for any address problems on the ground. While it may seem straightforward to use the postal service file for this purpose, this can be out of date and some dwellings may contain several independent households. A particular problem is what is termed " communal establishments ", a category that includes student residences, religious orders, homes for

9796-461: The elderly, people in prisons, etc. As these are not easily enumerated by a single householder, they are often treated differently and visited by special teams of census workers to ensure they are classified appropriately. Individuals are normally counted within households , and information is typically collected about the household structure and the housing. For this reason, international documents refer to censuses of population and housing. Normally

9920-483: The essential features of population and housing censuses as "individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory, simultaneity and defined periodicity", and recommends that population censuses be taken at least every ten years. UN recommendations also cover census topics to be collected, official definitions, classifications, and other useful information to coordinate international practices. The UN 's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in turn, defines

10044-404: The factors that impact the results of opinion polls are the wording and order of the questions being posed by the surveyor. Questions that intentionally affect a respondents answer are referred to as leading questions . Individuals and/or groups use these types of questions in surveys to elicit responses favorable to their interests. For instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for

10168-548: The federal government's decision to do so. The use of alternative enumeration strategies is increasing but these are not as simple as many people assume and are only used in developed countries. The Netherlands has been most advanced in adopting a census using administrative data . This allows a simulated census to be conducted by linking several different administrative databases at an agreed time. Data can be matched, and an overall enumeration established allowing for discrepancies between different data sources. A validation survey

10292-693: The field of public opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later became partner. In September 1938, Jean Stoetzel , after having met Gallup, created IFOP, the Institut Français d'Opinion Publique , as the first European survey institute in Paris. Stoetzel started political polls in summer 1939 with the question " Why die for Danzig? ", looking for popular support or dissent with this question asked by appeasement politician and future collaborationist Marcel Déat . Gallup launched

10416-423: The form of conditional distributions ( histograms ) can be derived interactively from the estimated mixture model without any further access to the original database. As the final product does not contain any protected microdata, the model-based interactive software can be distributed without any confidentiality concerns. Another method is simply to release no data at all, except very large scale data directly to

10540-443: The geographic distribution of the population or the agricultural population, statistics can be produced about combinations of attributes, e.g., education by age and sex in different regions. Current administrative data systems allow for other approaches to enumeration with the same level of detail but raise concerns about privacy and the possibility of biasing estimates. A census can be contrasted with sampling in which information

10664-792: The historical structure of society. Political considerations influence the census in many countries. In Canada in 2010 for example, the government under the leadership of Stephen Harper abolished the mandatory long-form census. This abolition was a response to protests from some Canadians who resented the personal questions. The long-form census was reinstated by the Justin Trudeau government in 2016. As governments assumed responsibility for schooling and welfare, large government research departments made extensive use of census data. Population projections could be made, to help plan for provision in local government and regions. Central government could also use census data to allocate funding. Even in

10788-466: The identification of individuals in marginal populations; others swap variables for similar respondents. Whatever is done to reduce the privacy risk, new improved electronic analysis of data can threaten to reveal sensitive individual information. This is known as statistical disclosure control . Another possibility is to present survey results by means of statistical models in the form of a multivariate distribution mixture. The statistical information in

10912-511: The internet. It is also possible that the hidden nature of an administrative census means that users are not engaged with the importance of contributing their data to official statistics. Alternatively, population estimations may be carried out remotely with geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing technologies. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), "The information generated by

11036-413: The late 1930s, though, corporate advertisers had begun a successful counterattack against their critics." They rehabilitated the concept of consumer sovereignty by inventing scientific public opinion polls, and making it the centerpiece of their own market research, as well as the key to understanding politics. George Gallup, the vice president of Young and Rubicam, and numerous other advertising experts, led

11160-409: The margin of error is to rely on poll averages . This makes the assumption that the procedure is similar enough between many different polls and uses the sample size of each poll to create a polling average. Another source of error stems from faulty demographic models by pollsters who weigh their samples by particular variables such as party identification in an election. For example, if you assume that

11284-425: The media and the electoral process. In the U.S., Congress and state governments have criticized the use of exit polling because Americans tend to believe more in the accuracy of exit polls. If an exit poll shows that American voters were leaning toward a particular candidate, most would assume that the candidate would win. However, as mentioned earlier, an exit poll can sometimes be inaccurate and lead to situations like

11408-467: The micro-blogging platform Twitter ) for modelling and predicting voting intention polls. A benchmark poll is generally the first poll taken in a campaign. It is often taken before a candidate announces their bid for office, but sometimes it happens immediately following that announcement after they have had some opportunity to raise funds. This is generally a short and simple survey of likely voters. Benchmark polling often relies on timing, which can be

11532-524: The mid 20th century, census data was only directly accessible to large government departments. However, computers meant that tabulations could be used directly by university researchers, large businesses and local government offices. They could use the detail of the data to answer new questions and add to local and specialist knowledge. Nowadays, census data are published in a wide variety of formats to be accessible to business, all levels of government, media, students and teachers, charities, and any citizen who

11656-429: The necessary information to learn more about it. Despite this, there are two issues with deliberative opinion polls. First, they are expensive and challenging to perform since they require a representative sample of voters, and the information given on specific issues must be fair and balanced. Second, the results of deliberative opinion polls generally do not reflect the opinions of most voters since most voters do not take

11780-497: The one ordered by the second Rashidun caliph , Umar . The Domesday Book was undertaken in AD   1086 by William I of England so that he could properly tax the land he had recently conquered. In 1183, a census was taken of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem , to ascertain the number of men and amount of money that could possibly be raised against an invasion by Saladin , sultan of Egypt and Syria . The first national census of France ( L'État des paroisses et des feux )

11904-545: The part of the pollsters; many of them are statistical in nature. Some blame respondents for not providing genuine answers to pollsters, a phenomenon known as social desirability-bias (also referred to as the Bradley effect or the Shy Tory Factor ); these terms can be quite controversial. Polls based on samples of populations are subject to sampling error which reflects the effects of chance and uncertainty in

12028-403: The poll is done prior to announcing for office the candidate may use the poll to decide whether or not they should even run for office. Secondly, it shows them where their weaknesses and strengths are in two main areas. The first is the electorate. A benchmark poll shows them what types of voters they are sure to win, those they are sure to lose, and everyone in-between these two extremes. This lets

12152-611: The poll, causing it to favor the candidate most different from the others while it disfavors candidates who are similar to other candidates. The plurality voting system also biases elections in the same way. Some people responding may not understand the words being used, but may wish to avoid the embarrassment of admitting this, or the poll mechanism may not allow clarification, so they may make an arbitrary choice. Some percentage of people also answer whimsically or out of annoyance at being polled. This results in perhaps 4% of Americans reporting they have personally been decapitated . Among

12276-434: The poll, poll samples may not be representative samples from a population due to a non-response bias . Response rates have been declining, and are down to about 10% in recent years. Various pollsters have attributed this to an increased skepticism and lack of interest in polling. Because of this selection bias , the characteristics of those who agree to be interviewed may be markedly different from those who decline. That is,

12400-504: The population of interest to the pollster. A scientific poll not only will have a sufficiently large sample, it will also be sensitive to response rates. Very low response rates will raise questions about how representative and accurate the results are. Are there systematic differences between those who participated in the survey and those who, for whatever reason, did not participate? Sampling methods, sample size, and response rates will all be discussed in this chapter" (Asher 2017). A caution

12524-492: The presidential election, but Roosevelt was instead re-elected by a landslide. George Gallup 's research found that the error was mainly caused by participation bias ; those who favored Landon were more enthusiastic about returning their postcards. Furthermore, the postcards were sent to a target audience who were more affluent than the American population as a whole, and therefore more likely to have Republican sympathies. At

12648-491: The problems of overcount and undercount and the coherence of census enumerations with other official sources of data. For instance, during the 2020 U.S. Census, the Census Bureau counted people primarily by collecting answers sent by mail, on the internet, over the phone, or using shared information through proxies. These methods accounted for 95.5 percent of all occupied housing units in the United States. This reflects

12772-570: The questions are then worded in a way that limit the possible answers, typically to yes or no. Another type of question that can produce inaccurate results are " Double-Negative Questions". These are more often the result of human error, rather than intentional manipulation. One such example is a survey done in 1992 by the Roper Organization , concerning the Holocaust . The question read "Does it seem possible or impossible to you that

12896-455: The radius of the confidence interval for a reported percentage of 50%. Others suggest that a poll with a random sample of 1,000 people has margin of sampling error of ±3% for the estimated percentage of the whole population. A 3% margin of error means that if the same procedure is used a large number of times, 95% of the time the true population average will be within the sample estimate plus or minus 3%. The margin of error can be reduced by using

13020-506: The reign of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya under the leadership of Chanakya and Ashoka . The English term is taken directly from the Latin census , from censere ("to estimate"). The census played a crucial role in the administration of the Roman government, as it was used to determine the class a citizen belonged to for both military and tax purposes. Beginning in the middle republic, it

13144-416: The same characteristics as the people who do answer, then the final results should be unbiased. If the people who do not answer have different opinions then there is bias in the results. In terms of election polls, studies suggest that bias effects are small, but each polling firm has its own techniques for adjusting weights to minimize selection bias. Survey results may be affected by response bias , where

13268-402: The same time, Gallup, Archibald Crossley and Elmo Roper conducted surveys that were far smaller but more scientifically based, and all three managed to correctly predict the result. The Literary Digest soon went out of business, while polling started to take off. Roper went on to correctly predict the two subsequent reelections of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Louis Harris had been in

13392-408: The sampling process. Sampling polls rely on the law of large numbers to measure the opinions of the whole population based only on a subset, and for this purpose the absolute size of the sample is important, but the percentage of the whole population is not important (unless it happens to be close to the sample size). The possible difference between the sample and whole population is often expressed as

13516-776: The second opinion without having it, causing opinion polls to become part of self-fulfilling prophecy problems. It has been suggested that attempts to counteract unethical opinions by condemning supposedly linked opinions may favor the groups that promote the actually unethical opinions by forcing people with supposedly linked opinions into them by ostracism elsewhere in society making such efforts counterproductive, that not being sent between groups that assume ulterior motives from each other and not being allowed to express consistent critical thought anywhere may create psychological stress because humans are sapient, and that discussion spaces free from assumptions of ulterior motives behind specific opinions should be created. In this context, rejection of

13640-534: The standard of a statistical register by comparing the data from different sources and ensuring the quality is sufficient for official statistics to be produced. A recent innovation is the French instigation of a rolling census program with different regions enumerated each year so that the whole country is completely enumerated every 5 to 10 years. In Europe, in connection with the 2010 census round, many countries adopted alternative census methodologies, often based on

13764-435: The third by Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Dieterici in 1859. In 1931, Walter Willcox published a table in his book, International Migrations: Volume II Interpretations , that estimated the 1929 world population to be roughly 1.8 billion. Opinion poll An opinion poll , often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election), is a human research survey of public opinion from

13888-466: The time to research issues the way an academic researches issues. Exit polls interview voters just as they are leaving polling places. Unlike general public opinion polls, these are polls of people who voted in the election. Exit polls provide a more accurate picture of which candidates the public prefers in an election because people participating in the poll did vote in the election. Second, these polls are conducted across multiple voting locations across

14012-445: The tone of the question(s) and generate a certain response or reaction, rather than gauge sentiment in an unbiased manner. In opinion polling, there are also " loaded questions ", otherwise known as " trick questions ". This type of leading question may concern an uncomfortable or controversial issue, and/or automatically assume the subject of the question is related to the respondent(s) or that they are knowledgeable about it. Likewise,

14136-534: The volatility of the results was at least in part due to an uneven distribution of Democratic and Republican affiliated voters in the samples. Though the Gallup Organization argued the volatility in the poll was a genuine representation of the electorate, other polling organizations took steps to reduce such wide variations in their results. One such step included manipulating the proportion of Democrats and Republicans in any given sample, but this method

14260-796: The way. Moving into the 1940s, the industry played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people in fighting the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II. As part of that effort, they redefined the "American Way of Life" in terms of a commitment to free enterprise. "Advertisers", Lears concludes, "played a crucial hegemonic role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society." Opinion polls for many years were maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person contact. Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely accepted in most areas. Over

14384-653: The winner (albeit not the extent of their winning margin), with the last two correctly predicting the winner of the popular vote (but not the Electoral College). In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of 1970 and 1992 , and Labour's victory in February 1974 . In the 2015 election , virtually every poll predicted a hung parliament with Labour and

14508-440: The wording of the question. On some issues, question wording can result in quite pronounced differences between surveys. This can also, however, be a result of legitimately conflicted feelings or evolving attitudes, rather than a poorly constructed survey. A common technique to control for this bias is to rotate the order in which questions are asked. Many pollsters also split-sample. This involves having two different versions of

14632-461: The years, technological innovations have also influenced survey methods such as the availability of electronic clipboards and Internet based polling. Opinion polling developed into popular applications through popular thought, although response rates for some surveys declined. Also, the following has also led to differentiating results: Some polling organizations, such as Angus Reid Public Opinion , YouGov and Zogby use Internet surveys, where

14756-430: Was a clear tendency for polls which included mobile phones in their samples to show a much larger lead for Obama , than polls that did not. The potential sources of bias are: Some polling companies have attempted to get around that problem by including a "cellphone supplement". There are a number of problems with including cellphones in a telephone poll: A widely publicized failure of opinion polling to date in

14880-443: Was abandoned, with the contract being sold to Brazil. The online response has some advantages, but one of the functions of the census is to make sure everyone is counted accurately. A system that allowed people to enter their address without verification would be open to abuse. Therefore, households have to be verified on the ground, typically by an enumerator visit or post out . Paper forms are still necessary for those without access to

15004-533: Was designed to elicit basic information about the nature of the land and the life of its peoples. The replies, known as " relaciones geográficas ", were written between 1579 and 1585 and were returned to the Cronista Mayor in Spain by the Council of the Indies. The earliest estimate of the world population was made by Giovanni Battista Riccioli in 1661; the next by Johann Peter Süssmilch in 1741, revised in 1762;

15128-573: Was first identified in 2004, but came to prominence only during the 2008 US presidential election . In previous elections, the proportion of the general population using cell phones was small, but as this proportion has increased, there is concern that polling only landlines is no longer representative of the general population. In 2003, only 2.9% of households were wireless (cellphones only), compared to 12.8% in 2006. This results in " coverage error ". Many polling organisations select their sample by dialling random telephone numbers; however, in 2008, there

15252-524: Was undertaken in 1328, mostly for fiscal purposes. It estimated the French population at 16 to 17 million. In the 15th century, the Inca Empire had a unique way to record census information. The Incas did not have any written language but recorded information collected during censuses and other numeric information as well as non-numeric data on quipus , strings from llama or alpaca hair or cotton cords with numeric and other values encoded by knots in

15376-493: Was usually carried out every five years. It provided a register of citizens and their property from which their duties and privileges could be listed. It is said to have been instituted by the Roman king Servius Tullius in the 6th century BC, at which time the number of arms-bearing citizens was supposedly counted at around 80,000. When the Romans conquered Judea in AD   6, the legate Publius Sulpicius Quirinius organized

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