The Telegraph understands that Angus Robertson, the secretary of the Constitution with final responsibility for the census, will tell MSPs at Holyrood on Thursday that there will be a four-week extension to Sunday’s deadline to complete the paperwork. The humiliating collapse will add weight to claims that the SNP’s decision to delay the census for a year, which was blamed on Covid and cost taxpayers an extra ,6 21.6m, was a big mistake. It was argued at the time that a 12-month postponement would “ensure the highest possible response rate”. However, as of last weekend, only 74 per cent of the leaflets in Scotland had been returned without information from 700,000 households. In the rest of the UK, where the census took place as planned last year, the exercise was successful with 97 per cent of households responding.
Data quality concerns
Experts warned that the low response rate would mean that the results of the census, necessary for the distribution of public funding and the definition of government policies, would become “useless”. However, the unprecedented decision to review the research once it had already begun could also see data quality at risk, academics said. Conducting the survey at the same time of year as in previous decades had previously been proposed by the National Records of Scotland, which conducts the inventory, as important to ensure consistency and comparability of data. “The extension of the response window raises worrying questions about data quality,” said Lindsay Paterson, a professor of educational policy at the University of Edinburgh. “In routine social surveys, there are strict quality controls about the time given to respond. “This is because people differ in the way they answer, especially for opinion questions, such as the various identity questions in the census. For example, the way people answer the question about gender identity can vary depending on whether there is a gender identity dispute in the news. The same goes for national identity and national identity. “ He added: “As a social statistician, I would not use identity census data that had such an arbitrarily varied response window.”
Accusations of political bias
Some respondents to the survey, called Scotland’s Census, complained that the questions were politically biased. For example, respondents may be identified as Scots, Poles or Irish, but not English. There has also been controversy over guidance that informs people that they can choose whether they are men or women based on their gender identity and not biological sex. Others said it was difficult to request printed forms for an inventory designed to be completed primarily online. Edward Cartwright, director of the Institute for Applied Economics and Social Value at De Montfort University, said a major publicity stunt had taken place in England and Wales, with a high response rate. However, the move to delay the census for a year meant that Scotland was left to rely on its own awareness campaigns, which failed to achieve the same results. “The response rate is alarmingly low at this stage and something is clearly wrong,” he said. “The most important thing is to convince as many people as possible to complete it, so extending the deadline makes sense. But that should come with a plan, as that alone does not solve the problem. “An extension also means that people should remember what they did two months earlier, so an error will be added, especially for mobile groups such as students or people who travel a lot for work.” The inventory bosses had initially set a response rate of 94 percent overall and at least 85 percent in each area of the board. In Glasgow, however, the turnout on Monday was just 65.5 percent.
“A sad failure”
Donald Cameron, a senior member of the Scottish Tories MSP, said the extension would be tantamount to an admission by the SNP that they had damaged the inventory. He said the fiasco followed previous failed publicity campaigns, such as FACTS to raise awareness of Covid or to try to inform the public about new legislation on home fire alarms. He added: “The inventory is vital in determining the Scottish Government’s allocation of resources, so this unfortunate failure has very serious consequences.” A spokesman for National Records of Scotland said: “Our focus continues to be on supporting and allowing other households to complete their inventory by early May, adding to the more than two million households across Scotland who have already done so. ».
