Ministers in the government of Nicolas Sturgeon are ready to dramatically abandon their deadline for the census in Scotland, after the low response rate left the study worth 138 million British pounds on the brink of disaster.
The Telegraph understands that Angus Robertson, the constitutional secretary with ultimate responsibility for the census, will tell the MSP in Holyrood on Thursday that there will be a four-week extension of Sunday’s deadline for filling out forms.
The humiliating descent will add weight to claims that the SNP’s decision to postpone the census by one year, which was accused of Covid and cost taxpayers an additional £ 21.6 million, was a serious mistake.
It was then argued that a 12-month delay would “ensure the highest possible response rate.” However, as of last weekend, only 74% of forms in Scotland had been returned without information provided by 700,000 households.
In the rest of the UK, where the census continued as planned last year, the exercise was successful, with 97 per cent of households responding.
Concerns about data quality
Experts warned that the low response rate would mean that the census results, which are essential for allocating public funding and setting government policies, would be made “useless”.
However, the unprecedented decision to revise the study, once launched, could also compromise data quality, scientists said.
Conducting the survey at the same time of year as in previous decades was suggested by the Scottish National Records, which conducted the census, as important to ensure consistency and comparability of data.
“Expanding the response window raises worrying questions about data quality,” said Lindsay Patterson, a professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh. “In normal social surveys, there is strict control over the quality of the time given in response.
“This is because people differ in the way they answer, especially on opinion questions, such as a few questions about identity in the census. For example, the way people answer the question of gender identity may vary depending on whether some gender identity disputes are in the news. The same goes for national identity and ethnic identity. “
He added: “As a social statistician, I would not use identity census data that have such an arbitrarily varying response window.
Accusations of political bias
Some respondents to a survey called the Scottish Census complained that the issues were politically biased. For example, respondents may register as Scots, Poles or Irish, but not English.
There were also controversies about guidelines that inform people that they can choose whether they are men or women based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
Others say it is difficult to require paper census forms, which are designed to be filled out mostly online.
Edward Cartwright, director of the Institute of Applied Economics and Social Value at the University of De Montfort, said there had been a lot of publicity and knocking on doors in England and Wales, providing a high response rate.
However, the one-year postponement of the census meant that Scotland was left to rely on its own awareness-raising campaigns, which failed to achieve the same results.
“The response rate is alarmingly low at this stage and something is clearly wrong,” he said.
“The most important thing is to get as many people as possible to complete it, so extending the deadline makes sense. But this must come with a plan, as this alone does not solve the problem.
“The extension also means that people will have to remember what they did two months earlier, so some mistakes will be added, especially for mobile groups like students or people who travel a lot for work.”
Initially, the census chiefs set a target response rate of 94 percent overall and at least 85 percent in each area of the council. In Glasgow, however, the response rate on Monday was just 65.5%.
“Fucking failure”
Donald Cameron, the top Scottish Tory MSP, said the extension would mean an acknowledgment by the SNP that they had spoiled the census.
He said the fiasco followed previous failed advertising campaigns, such as the FACTS Covid awareness campaign or an attempt to inform the public about new legislation on home fire alarms.
He added: “The census is vital in determining the allocation of resources to the Scottish Government, so this deplorable failure has very serious consequences.
A spokesman for the National Records of Scotland said: “Our focus continues to be on supporting and enabling other households to complete their census by early May, adding to the more than two million households in Scotland that have already done so.
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