28 Jul Census: a mistake in the long form

Contrarian reader Gus Reed has found a mistake in Census Canada’s long form questionnaire — or at least in the sample that appears on the agency’s website.

It seems to me that at the top of page 5 the columns should be labeled “Person 3,” “Person 4,” and “Person 5” – continuing the logic of page 4. Is it my PDF reader that’s wrong, or did StatsCan send out 2.4 million errors?

StatsCan hasn’t sent out anything yet, and there’s still time to fix the error, along with the much more serious mistake of making the long form voluntary. But Gus is right. The headers are inconsistent in a way that might lead respondents to omit information about some household members, or else enter responses in the wrong place. It’s hard to describe the problem without looking at the form, but this ought to be fixed.

Gus has a lot more to say about the long form. Stay tuned.