Week 3: The census methodology in Pakistan

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses include traditional culture, business, supplies, agricultural, and traffic censuses. The United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as "individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory, simultaneity and defined periodicity", and recommends that population censuses be taken at least every ten years.

Historical censuses used crude enumeration assuming absolute accuracy. Modern approaches take into account the problems of overcount and undercount, and the coherence of census enumerations with other official sources of data. This reflects a realist approach to measurement, acknowledging that under any definition of residence there is a true value of the population[gobbledegook] but this can never be measured with complete accuracy. An important aspect of the census process is to evaluate the quality of the data

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