In the second part of this chapter, I focus on the preliminary checking of the Interviewer Household Forms (IHFs) at the CMU, and on certain global problems with the data that emerged from the process. Checking was undertaken mainly at weekends by members of the CMU staff. From time to time, some of the CFOs were present, and the opportunity was taken to put outstanding queries to them about the regions in which they had worked. Several of the CFOs spent some time at the CMU helping to process the forms themselves.

There were two main tasks in the checking process. The first was undertaken in order to ensure that the forms were in maximally good order before being sent to the DPC in Melbourne. I learned later in Melbourne that not all CMUs had done this, and the DPC staff was very grateful to the Darwin CMU for its efforts. That Darwin focused on this exercise can be attributed to the fact that the person overseeing the IES had herself worked in the DPC in Sydney in 2001, and therefore had an understanding of the issues that would cause problems at the DPC if they were not addressed in Darwin. I draw attention to this as a classic example of the usefulness of ‘local knowledge’. Because this person had an understanding of the context into which the forms were being sent, she was able to ensure that the forms were well prepared for that context.

The necessity for the second task emerged as a result of this ‘grooming’ process. It quickly became apparent that there were very large numbers of PTA, and that the CFOs, CCs and CIs had not been consistent across the board in the way that these people had been treated. Many who should have been moved ‘into the form’ (see Chapter 2) because they were unlikely to be counted elsewhere had not been moved, and the sheer number of PTAs raised concerns about whether even those who were said to be somewhere where they should, theoretically, have been counted, had in fact been counted at that place. The second task, then, was to deal with the problem of PTAs.

I will devote most of this chapter to that second problem. When it became obvious, I decided that among other things, I would focus on the forms from the area where I had observed the count, reasoning that by doing so I would be able to undertake a detailed quantitative analysis of the scale and nature of the PTA problem in that particular area.