Evaluation of Content Error
Pres. 10
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009
Examples - Tabulations for Content Error Estimates
 Sex as reported in the census and as reported in the PES
for matched persons
 Age as reported in the census and as reported in the PES
for matched persons
 Family relationship as reported in PES for matched
persons
NOTE: PES should check content errors only for those items
that support PES procedures
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009
Evaluation of Content Error
Net difference rate (NDR)
 The NDR is the difference between the number of cases in
the census and number of cases in the PES that fall under a
category (e.g. age-group) relative to the total number of
matched persons in all response categories
NDR 
where
xi  xi 
100
m
xi  unweighted census number of cases in the i th category
xi  unweighted PES number of cases in the i th category
m  unweighted number of matched cases
s  total number of response categories for characteri stic x
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009
Evaluation of Content Error (contd.)
Index of inconsistency
 It is a relative number of cases for which the response varied
between the census and PES. In a n x n table, numbers in
diagonal cells show consistency (agreement). Off diagonal
numbers represent inconsistency. This is calculated for each
response from a category
Iˆ 
 xi  xi  2 xii 
1
xi m  xi   xi m  xi 
m
i  1,2,3,  , s
where xii  number of cases where categoryi
is a responsecategory in both thecensus and thePES
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009
Evaluation of Content Error (contd.)
Other measures include:
 It is Aggregate index of inconsistency
 Gross difference rate
 Rate of agreement
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009
How to interpret content error measures
Index
Low
Moderate
High
Absolute value of NDR
< 0.01
0.01-0.05
>0.05
Index of Inconsistency
<20
20-50
>50
Aggregate Index of
Inconsistency
<20
20-50
>50
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009
Thank You!
United Nations Regional Workshop on the 2010 World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses:
Census Evaluation and Post Enumeration Surveys, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 September 2009