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

I. THE COMPREHENSIVE REWIEV OF THE DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING - 8. The electronic data processing of the census of 1970

The family and. household status, control and correction other serial numbers The examination and correction of the multiple connections took place in the third segment. It is the only correction programme in which - in addition to the criteria referring to the individuals taken separately - each code - number of the persons dwelling in a flat are simultaneously available for control and correction purposes. It is suitable, in first place, to the correction of the data and basis criteria referring to the family and the household, but it was preferable, at the same time, to perform here the summary control and correction of several other criteria (for instance the family status). The correction of the family and household status is highly important from two aspects. Its code numbers ensure the mechanical construction of the file of the families and households. On account of the population categories, two different structures of families and households have to be examined and corrected which significantly differ, in order to eliminate contradictions. Both structures make possible the construction of two sorts of files, namely the files constructed according to the criteria of the "resident" population and the "permanent" population. The code-numbers of the families and households also figure among the basis criteria. When taking into consideration the former step of correction, it is enough to consider from among the codenumbers of the family and household, the status as the single basis. Accepting this, the family status may be regarded, within the group of the basis criteria, as faultless. As to the correction of the family status, the whole complex of the possible combinations of households and families is available. The correction is generally made by means of comparing the deficient structure consisting of the precisely coded members of the household, to all possible compositions of the household. The possible further code-numbers to be occurred with the greatest frequency in similar connections, are to be considered the adequate starting points to correct the personal data of the wrongly coded person. It occurred sometimes (although on rare occasions) that among the extraodinarily high number of-variations, a possibility has emerged for which the planned programme was not prepared or which seemed to be entirely improbable. In such cases, the machine has tried to correct the code numbers, and performed subsequently 50 experiments; but if the operation remained unsuccessful, it has printed the erroneous composition of the household. This was performed twice. In the second round, the faultless items or those corrected previously remained unchanged, and it came to further 50 experiments to correct the errors not yet eliminated. If the experiments had no effect, the error was printed again by the machine. In this case, on the basis of the printed list, the corrections should have performed by manual techniques. According to the practical experiences, manual operations had to be performed in the case of 4-5 households by technical units (about 40 000 items). The control a?id correction of basis criteria In order to correct the errors originating from wrong combination of criteria, a number of valid codes are needed at the very begining of the operations. On this purpose some basis criteria have been fixed for which, using both manual and computer techniques, a low rate of errors could be ensured. 70