1970 HUNGARIAN CENSUS OF POPULATION Information on the data collection and processing (1977)

I. THE COMPREHENSIVE REWIEV OF THE DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING - 7. The preparation, programme and organization of the data processing

- the unmatched control sheet referred - in the overwhelming majority of the cases - to a person who had been omitted from the census in one of his dwelling places, and the individual inquiry form had to be replaced. On this purpose, the data recorded on the control sheet have been copied to an individual registration form which was put into the file, with the adequate remarks. The filling in of the individual inquiry form has been performed, with the exception of the family status and the presence or absence as well as of the domicile, by means of simple copying. The family status had to be stated again, since it may have changed in a number of cases (for example, a member of an institutional household, i. e. condidered independent person may be, as considered within his family, either the head of the family or a child). In a similar manner, the presence (or absence) and the nature of the registration (permanent or temporary domicile) may have changed. The harmonizing process as described in the above has ensured that the figures reflecting the present and the temporarily absent population be equalized, taking anyway into consideration the number of the Hungarian citizens abroad and the foreigners living here. The number of the personal inquiry forms replaced during the checking procedure was quite large: it amounted to 264 000. The replacing touched upon mainly the categories of population having the 5^, ö"

1 and 7 code numbers, i.e. the absent persons. The procedure resulted in the correction of the resident population by 76 000, that of the permanently domiciled population by 113 000 persons. By not means negligible was the number of cases where, during the checking of the control sheets, the code number of the population category hat to be corrected. c/ THE PREPARATION OF THE DATA PROCESSING OF THE FINAL DATA It was the task of the census takers to code the simpler notions into the designed squares of the inquiry forms amounting to 75 per cent of the (basic) census material. Next to the respective number to be marked by underlining, the code number corresponding to the category has been indicated. 19 notions of the 31 figuring on the registration form of the dwellings, and 10 groups of notions of 40 referring to the persons had to be coded simultaneously with the registration. The centrally performed preparatory work was, in this respect, the checking of the adequate code numbers, the supervision of the categories used by the census-takers and the supplementary coding of the notions. The latter concerned mainly the questions of the household and family, the codes of the educational level and the occupation. The central bureau of the census provided the coding of the survey forms of 25 per cent representativity. The coding and its supervision has been carried out in a number of phases in order to ensure the mind of the coding personnel better concentrated on a given topic. The revision of the coding was not a full--scale operation, it concerned but 30 per cent of the material. Later on, when the errors made by the coding personnel was low enough, the revision was of 20 or 15 per cent representativity. The 30 per cent, or the 15-20 per cent respectively concerned the dwellings. It meant that beginning with the initial number (which permanently changed, in order to render the work of the coding personnel independent of the revision), according to the given pat59