Badly filled census forms

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 1

Badly filled census forms

Hundreds of people in Christchurch have made a slovenly and indifferent effort to complete the personal and household schedules for the 1971 national census.

The poor response to the census is revealed in the first returns collected by sub-enumer-ators in the city on Wednesday. The organiser of the census (Mr R. L. Butcher) said yesterday that reports from the sub-enumerators indicated that many householders had either failed to read the schedules carefully or had adopted a careless attitude in completing them. The major problem was that more than half the personal schedules had not been signed by adults and the schedules filled in by parents for their children had not been signed. This meant sub-enumerators would have to return to homes and get the forms signed. Mr Butcher said that another major problem was the refusal of people to disclose details of their education, war service and salary. "People are still very reluctant to reveal what salary bracket they are in,” he said. Many older people were not filling in details about their education, probably because they had forgotten, Mr Butcher said. He urged people to try to remember as best they could how long they had been at school. Other people had filled in only the top half of the personal schedule and made only a token effort to do that properly. Mr Butcher said that some sub-enumerators were being greeted with gross indifference and even open hostility when collecting the forms. On the other hand, there were people who had obviously gone about completing the forms in a conscientious and diligent manner.

Mr Butcher urged those whose forms had not yet been collected to look them over and make sure they had answered all the questions and signed the forms. Subenumerators would be greatly assisted if the schedules were pinned together.