POPULATION AND HOUSING
CENSUSES IN SLOVAKIA ON
THE WEBSITE
Miroslav Hudec
Pavol Büchler
INFOSTAT – Bratislava
MSIS Geneva 8.-10.5.2007
Introduction
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Brief history of censuses
Censuses in Slovakia
About censuses on the website
Censuses from years 1980 to 2001
Censuses from years 1921 to 1970
Conclusions and future improvements
Brief history of censuses
Population censuses belong to the oldest statistical actions in the human
history. The effort to find the number of inhabitants of an area is as old as all
advanced civilisations are. The first ancient censuses were realised mainly for
the military and tax purposes.
In Middle Age and in first centuries of modern times certain registration actions
were performed in Europe.
More or less regular censuses involving the whole population were realised in
Europe only from the half of 18th century. Items like, biological, social and
economic characteristics were gradually added to surveys.
Censuses in Slovakia
In the area of Slovakia, then a part of Hungaria, is as the beginning of organised
statistical surveys considered the year 1715. In this year was realised the
registration of population aimed to family heads of groups whose were the
subject to taxation.
The first census including all inhabitants was realised in Slovakia in years 1778
– 1785. The monitored items included name, age, marital status, class rank,
employment of registered persons and data concerning the population migration.
In 1847 was in Hungaria established the Statistical Office with an routine
service and from this year censuses were performed in ca 10 year periods.
From 1869 were censuses realised according to the principles defined by
international statistical congresses. As early as 1890 the data were processed
also by Hollerith punch card machines.
Censuses on the website
The aim of this project was to enhance the knowledge of domestic and foreign
general audience and professionals about modern population and housing
censuses realised in the area of Slovakia. The project team were analyzed
censuses from years 1921 to 2001. The solution offers:
• detailed results and other related basic information (legislation, historical
context, questionnaires, processing technologies, maps...)
• unified accessibility and comprehensibility by presenting data and other
relevant documents in one place and in the unified form,
• comparison selected indicators in their historical context (the website contains
time series, some of which start in 1848),
• open scalable solution allowing trouble-free expansion in the future.
Censuses from years 1980 to 2001
The data from these censuses, which were already in the census time computer
processed, were available in digital form as Oracle databases. The data from
1980 and 1991 years were originally stored as text files and converted to
Oracle within the frame of another project in year 2004. However, the data
from these censuses were in different formats and stored in separate databases.
As the first step in the project realisation the creation of the three - dimensional
data structure (time, territory and indicator), the conversion to the unified data
format and the storage of data into this database was realised. This solution
allows the simple retrieval of stored data and their use in the presentation form.
Metadata for search and navigation are interconnected with descriptive
metadata to allow easy navigation across territorial unit structure and table
templates.
Censuses from years 1980 to 2001
Censuses from years 1921 to 1970
The data sources from these censuses were available in paper form only.
From the 1970 census, which was the first census where data were
computer processed, electronic text files exist, but they are incomplete,
so the project team had to work with paper data sources.
Selected tables from paper documents found in archives, were converted
into electronic form and finally transformed into HTML format. Unlike
the tables of results from the years 1981 – 2001, which are created from
database records and table templates according to the user's request
dynamically, the tables of results from the 1921 - 1970 censuses are
static HTML files.
Censuses from years 1921 to 1970
Conclusions and future improvements
The website is realised as a compact entity; almost all web pages
(except some thematic maps) are presented in one window. The authors
paid maximal attention to the user friendliness of the system, so that the
navigation accross the web pages would be comprehensible and
efficient from the user’s point of view.
The application was prepared with the perspective of its future
enhancement by results of the next census planned for the year 2011.
Conclusions and future improvements
Future improvements:
• to enlarge the amount of presented data to the municipality level (1980-2001),
• to expand the amount of time series,
• to convert data from older censuses into similar form as the last censuses
and present them in dynamic way,
• to add a search engine working across the website,
• to enhance the English version of presentation as some information is
available only in Slovak language,
• to cooperate with statisticians and historians to present data from
censuses older than 1921 census.
The address of the Website is http://sodb.infostat.sk/sodb/index.htm
Thank you for your attention