It's not just governments that employ data from the census long form; the private sector uses it, and extensively too. If you want to open an Italian restaurant in Canadian City X, its the tract level data from the census long-form that will tell you where all the Italians are.
Thankfully, as you can see through the link above, private sector economists are getting huffed about the government's decision to kill the mandatory long-form for a lame voluntary substitute.
The gang from The Galloping Beaver have been on this story, and if you want to watch an economist get really PO-ed on the topic of selection bias and the Canadian Census, Stephen Gordon is your guy. It like a rant, only with statistics!
Who is this Robert Gorden you speak of?
ReplyDeleteFro Gordon:
ReplyDeleteIt's not often that sample selection bias becomes an issue of national importance, but then again, it's not often that census sampling design is outsourced to drunken monkeys
Ha!
Oops! Sorry Stephen. I plead lack of caffeine. Fixed.
ReplyDeleteThis part from the Metro article you linked is a hoot:
ReplyDelete"Clement has said the decision was made based on the fact that many Canadians had complained of the coercive and intrusive nature of the census. But he said he had not seen any polling on the issue and acknowledged he did no consultations."
It appears to be another decision from the gut.
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ReplyDeleteCould it just be about money? The government needs to make cuts to attack the deficit - maybe they thought this would be a good one to make as it would appeal to their base?
ReplyDeleteWell, they're not saving on the cost of sending them out, nor of analysing any that come back, so I can't see that being a big part of it.
ReplyDeleteIt appears to be another decision from the gut.
ReplyDeletePossibly. Or just another gutless decision...
Gayle and BCL,
ReplyDeleteI suspect it could well be about cost as much as gut. The individually mailed out long form wouldn't incur a great deal of extra cost on the front end for much of the nation. However, there are places where the long form is used almost exclusively and administered in person by enumerators for sampling validity, much of the North being an example.
Another thought is that processing the data might also incur substantial costs. Statistics Canada implemented a new system of data collection and processing during the last Census. That was what the hullaballoo over Lockheed Martin was all about. I have reason to suspect the performance of that system may have been somewhat less than stellar, and not worth the cost. Replacing it might be even more costly.
Whatever the case, we're not being given the full story.
The announcement was timed for when all the academics are on holiday or at conferences, and the genealogy groups are shut down for the summer. Coincidence?
ReplyDeleteI started an online petition to oppose scrapping of the census long form: you can sign it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gopetition.com/online/37527.html