When the boxes of IHFs from a particular Collection District (CD) arrived at the CMU, they should have had the following accompanying documentation:[1]
Indigenous Community Information form from the DICD
Interviewer Dwelling Checklists (IDCs) for Indigenous dwellings
separate IDCs for non-Indigenous and non-private dwellings
Master Dwelling Checklist (MDC)
checklist for CFO.
On the last of these, which the CFO was expected to complete before sending the forms to the CMU, the CFO was required to crosscheck, among other things, that:
the DICD form had been updated with available information
an IHF had been completed for each unoccupied dwelling
IHFs had been checked for Indigenous status non-response and followed up if necessary
IHFs had been checked for duplications between the PTA list at Question 11 and the people listed as present at Question 12
IHFs had been checked for usual address (Question 15)
Question 10 (‘Are there any persons who live here most of the time but are away?’) had been marked appropriately ‘no’ or ‘yes’
each IHF had its correct CD number, Census Record Number and form numbers (where more than one form had been used for a dwelling), and that these corresponded with the numbering on the MDC and IDCs
every dwelling on the MDC had been included on an IDC
non-Indigenous dwellings and non-private dwellings had been listed on separate IDCs
every dwelling listed on an IDC had been included on the MDC
counts had been checked against available estimates (with a note that at minimum these were the 2001 Census and the 2006 CHINS figures).
In practice, many of these CFO checklists were not filled in, so the CMU could not know whether or not the CFO had carried out the checks asked for, and very little attempt had been made to update the DICD forms. In many cases, the IDCs were also missing.[2]
The community checklist for the CMU had two sections. One—theoretically to be completed while the CFO was still in the field—asked the CMU checker to make sure that the CFO had recorded and reported the counts for people, dwellings and unoccupied dwellings. At the CMU, these counts were then checked against available estimates and the CFO notified of discrepancies for follow-up. In practice, this happened after the forms had been returned to the CMU and the CFO was either no longer in the field or was in a different CD, necessitating in some cases a return to particular CDs, or a follow-up by phone or fax.
The second part of the CMU checklist involved inspecting the forms to ascertain whether the CFO had carried out all the checks that they had been asked to do on the CFO checklist. In addition, the checkers at the CMU were asked specifically to do the following:
check the CD number on each form
check that the number of male and female—and total—persons listed at Question 12 for each dwelling corresponded with the number listed on the MDC
check that Question 18 on Indigenous status had been answered (and, if it had not been, to answer it in the positive if, on the evidence available on the form, the person was incontrovertibly Indigenous)
check Question 15 (usual address)
check that the details for PTA (Question 11) had been filled in
check that people who had been moved to Question 12 (‘inside the form’) had also been crossed off the PTA table, and that the details of their sex and date of birth had also been transferred inside the form
where a dwelling had people listed as PTA, but no one listed at Question 12, the checkers were instructed to amend the status of the dwelling to ‘unoccupied’ on the MDC
double-check that the grand totals on the MDC were correct.
All of these checks—and most of the checks that the CFOs were asked to undertake—were concerned ultimately with ensuring the consistency of the ‘head count’ aspect of the census and ensuring that as far as possible basic information about residence and Indigenous status had been recorded. All things being equal, they were designed to ensure that the forms sent to the DPC were internally consistent with respect to the number, sex ratio, usual residence and Indigenous status of the population. In terms of the accuracy of the count, the checks were initially more general in nature: the CMU was concerned if the population count for a particular CD or the number of dwellings for which forms existed was very different from the recently acquired CHINS data and/or the count at the 2001 Census. There were several cases in which CFOs were sent out again to investigate the reasons for discrepancies.
There were several issues where the checkers were told not to try to ‘fix’ discrepancies, for example, anomalies in ages and/or in the data on relationships between the members of the household. They were told that they had insufficient information to make changes and that the DPC had rules and procedures that applied in such cases. Again, this was an example of the application of prior knowledge about the context into which the forms were being sent.