Just under half of households will have paper forms hand-delivered or posted to them for the March 7 census.
That will be in addition to a code that will be sent to everyone and which will allow anyone to instead complete the census online.
Deputy government statistician Simon Mason says 44% of households will automatically receive the paper forms.
But those who don’t will still be able to ask for them to be posted to them if they prefer.
READ MORE:
* Ensuring New Zealanders are comfortable with how their data is used
* Statistics NZ pushes Census 2018 deadline further as issues continue
* 2018 Census – what happened?
Mason said Stats NZ would be taking a lot of variables into account when deciding who it would proactively send the paper forms, but wouldn’t always get it right.
Stats NZ will be attempting to hand-deliver full census packs including paper forms to 30% of households, focusing those deliveries in part on areas with a high Māori and Pacifica population and where deprivation is more common, so ethnicity and deprivation will come into play.
Factors that will determine who among the other 70% of people will automatically get paper forms will include how many people completed the census online last time in the area they live and the internet coverage in the area.
The 2023 Census will for the first time include questions about sexual identity and orientation.
“There is quite a lot of science involved,” Mason said.
“It all comes down to the likelihood of people responding via each channel.”
The March census is shaping up to be the one of the most talked about as a result of the inclusion of questions on people’s sexual identity and orientation.
It will also gather more information on iwi affiliation, and information designed to help provide support to the disabled.
It will take place in the face of possible new challenges.
Mason warned Statistics Minister David Clark in a briefing document in August that there was evidence of growing and significant anti-government sentiment and “reducing trust and confidence in the government in parts of the community”.
That sentiment could “negatively impact responses”, he cautioned.
But Mason is keen not to talk up that threat, saying that he is not sure if it would be accurate to say “misinformation and disinformation” was likely to be different from past censuses.
“It’s probably difficult to say whether the risk is severe, or trending in a bad place, but at the moment I can absolutely confirm it is a risk for us.”
Brodie Fraser, a public health research fellow at Otago University in Wellington, said Rainbow communities were pleased by the inclusion of the questions on sexual identity and orientation.
“It is something people in the community have been lobbying for, for a really long time.
“I’m very much looking forward to having more official data so we can better understand what our community looks like and what our needs are.”
Tom Pullar-Strecker/Stuff
The 2023 census has a budget of about $251 million.
Mason acknowledged that some people might object to being asked those questions, and people will be able to tick a box saying they would prefer not to answer the question on sexual orientation.
Fraser believed that was appropriate but didn’t imagine there would be “an incredibly large number of people” who did that.
Mason said it was possible that some people might skip over the questions.
“That is something that I think we are not keen to promote. It is something that people may make choices about themselves.”
Stats NZ’s message was for people to fill in the census “in the best way they can”, he said.
With a budget of $251 million, including $33m for cost overruns, some of which have already been incurred, the census is expected to cost double that of the last census in 2018.
But the information it gathers is also expected to be more valuable because of problems with the last two the censuses.
Stats NZ believes it undercounted the Māori population by about 49,000 in 2013.
Then there were broader issues in 2018 when an expectation that responses could be very largely gathered online proved overly optimistic.
That resulted in the response rate for the supposedly mandatory census slipping to just 85.5%.
Stats NZ has opted for something of a compromise in the March census by agreeing to send out paper forms to 44% of households.
It is also significantly increasing the size of the census field team and the hours they will work, which accounts for much of the extra cost.
“We will have 3500 collectors, versus 1800 in 2018, and they will be working twice the number of hours,” Mason said.
Stats NZ’s target is for at least 90% of the population to fill out the census this time.
If it achieves a 90% response rate, it estimates it should be able to fill in answers to some questions for another 8% of the population using information from other sources, an option it promotes as useful but definitely second-best.
