Population and Housing Census 2011
Samoa, 2011
Identification
WSM-SBS-PHC-2011-v1
Population and Housing Census 2011
PHC 2011
Tusigaigoa o le Faitau Aofa'i o Tagata ma Fale 2011
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| SAMOA | WSM |
Sample Frame, Households [sf/hh]
The PHC 2011 is the 9th census since Samoa's Independence in 1962. It was designed by the Samoa Bureau of Staistics (SBS) which was originally known as the Department of Statistics (DOS) from 1971-2002 and later on merged with the Ministry of Finance in 2003-2008 under the Division of Statistical Services.
In the PHC 2011, many questions and indicators were consistent and compatible with previous censuses. A number of new indicators have also been added while some were removed depending on national data needs from statistical stakeholders.
The PHC 2011 report is one of the 5-yearly series of PHC reports since 1951.
The 2011 Population and Housing Census of Samoa was taken on the midnight of November the 7th 2011. It counted every person in the country on that night and collected a wide range of social, economic and demographic information about each individual and their housing status.
The information were used to develop statistical indicators to support national plannning and policy-making and also to monitor MDG indicators and all other related conventions. This included population growth rates, educational attainment, employment rates, fertility rates, mortality rates, internal movements, household access to water supply, electricity, sanitation, and many other information. The full report is available at SBS website: http://www.sbs.gov.ws under the section on Population statistics and demography.
Census/enumeration data [cen]
Private households
Institutional households
Individuals
Women 15-49
Housing/Buildings
Version
Version 1: Edited, anonymous dataset for public distribution.
2012-10-26
Scope
The scope of the PHC 2011 includes:
Individuals: demographic characteristics, education, employment, fertility, mortality, internal movements and migration
Households: housing facilities and accessibility to socio-economic services
| Topic |
|---|
| Population |
| Housing |
Coverage
National coverage Regions Districts Village Enumeration areas
The PHC 2011 covered all de facto household members, institutional households such as boarding schools, hospitals, prison inmates and expatriates residing in Samoa for more than 3 months. The PHC excluded all tourists visiting Samoa during the enumeration period and all Samoans residing overseas.
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Samoa Bureau of Statistics | Government of Samoa |
| Name | Abbreviation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Government of Samoa | GoS | Shared funding |
| Government of Australia via AusAID | AusAID | Shared funding |
| United Nations Funds for Population Activities | UNFPA | Shared funding |
| Secretariat for Pacific Communities | SPC | Shared funding |
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Education Sports and Culture | Government ministry | Provided teachers to assist in census enumeration and field supervision |
| Ministry of Women Community and Social Development | Government ministry | Provided village representatives to promote census enumerations in villages |
| Samoa Parliamentary Group for Population Developments | Government organistation | Promoted census publicity in parliament and media |
| Census Technical Steering Committee | SBS users committee | Reviewed census questionnaire and tabulations |
| Secretariat for the Pacific Communities in Noumea | Regional organisation | Provided technical advice and training |
Sampling
Not applicable to a complete enumeration census.
Survey instrument
Users' consultation seminars were conducted for three consecutive days (June 8th -10th, 2010) with financial support provided by the office of UNFPA in Suva via the Samoa Parliamentary Group for Population Development (SPGPD) annual programs. For the first time in census history, the SPGPD or members of parliament have become the target group of users to get involved in any census questionnaire consultations.
All government ministries and non-governmental organizations were invited to the consultation seminars and each was asked to make a presentation of data needs for consideration in the final census 2011 questionnaire. To avoid re-inventing the wheel in the compilation of the list of census questions for census 2011, the questionnaire from the census 2006 was reprinted and distributed to all participants and presenters to select questions that they would consider again for the census 2011 in addition to their new data needs. Users were also advised that any new question would need good justifications of how it links to national interests.
At the end of the three days seminar, all new questions were compiled for final selection by Samoa Bureau of Statistics. Not all the users' data needs have been included in the final 2011 census questionnaire due mainly to the cost involved and limited time for census enumeration. Therefore, the final selection of questions was purely based on the linkage of the data being requested to the list of statistical indicators in the 'Strategy for the Development of Samoa 2008-2012' (SDS) and the 'Millennium Development Goals' (MDGs) 2015. All data requests outside of the two frameworks were put aside to be integrated in other more appropriate survey activities by the bureau.
From July 2010-December 2010, the questionnaire was formatted using the In-Design CS4 software. It is important to note that the PHC 2011 was the first ever census using the scanning technology to process data from the census questionnaires as a replacement of the usual manual data entry process. The scanning was pilot tested in April 2011, before it was finally used for final census enumeration.
The questionnaire was designed using A3 paper size.
The Population questionnaire was administered in each household, which collected various information on household members including age, sex, citizenship, disability, orphanhood, marital status, residence (birth, usual, previous), religion, education and employment.
In the Population questionnaire, a special section was administered in each household for women age 15-49, which also asked information on their children ever born still living, died or living somewhere else. Mothers of children under one year were also asked whether their last born children were still living at the time of the census.
The Housing questionnaire was also administered in each household which collected information on the types of building the household lived, floor materials, wall materials, roof materials, land tenure, house tenure, water supply, drinking water, lighting, cooking fuel, toilet facility, telephone, computer, internet, refrigerator, radio, television and others.
Data were processed in clusters, with each cluster being processed as a complete unit through each stage of data processing. Each cluster goes through the following steps:
- Questionnaire reception
- Office manual editing and coding
- Data entry using scanning
- Structure and completeness checking
- Verification program of scan entry
- Comparison of verification data
- Back up of raw scan data in Access
- Secondary program scan editing
- Edited data back up in Access
After all clusters are processed, all data is concatenated together and then the following steps are completed for all data files:
10) Export to CSPro 4.1 in 2 files (Population records and Housing records)
11) Recoding of variables needed for analysis
12) Structural checking of CSPro files
13) Data quality tabulations
14) Production of analysis tabulations
Details of each of these steps can be enquired at the Division of Census and Surveys at email address: info.stats@sbs.gov.ws or junior.ahyen@sbs.gov.ws
All scan data entry was conducted at the Division of Census and Surveys. Scanning was conducted using the Kodak i1400 Series Scanner and then exported to Access for verifications. Four scan operators conducted the scanning in two shifts supervised by 1 supervisor per shift using 2 scanners. Ten staffs were also allocated to verify scan data using Access and similarly they worked in two shifts of five staffs per shift. In the end, a total of 220,919 A3 size forms were completely scanned over a period of six weeks. Data verification took about 2 months to complete. At the completion of data verifications, raw data was backed up in Access and then it was exported to CSPro 4.1 for structure and completeness edits.
In CSpro 4.1, structure and completeness checks were carried out by the Division of IT and Data Processing at their office for about 4 months before sending back to the Census-Survey Team for final tabulation edits for another 2 months. After tabulation edits the Census-Survey Team again focused on running data analysis edits, recoding of variables for data reporting and making comparisons to previous census results. The first version of the edited dataset was created in August 2012 and the back-ups were stored in the internal and out of office external drives for safety pre-cautions. All final census tabulations and recoding of variables were run using CSPro 4.1 and statistical calculations and graphics were made in Excel and other available software.
Data collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 2011-10-24 | 2011-11-07 |
- Face-to-face [f2f]
| Name | Affiliation | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|
| Samoa Bureau of Statistics | Government office | SBS |
| Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture | Government ministry | MESC |
The census enumeration was divided into four statistical regions: Apia Urban Area (AUA), North West Upolu (NWU), Rest of Upolu (ROU) and Savaii. Each region had a number of districts, each district had a number of villages and each village had a number of census enumeration areas. The number of census enumeration areas in the villages was used to select the number of enumerators, supervisors and field editors per area.The total number of selected enumerators for AUA was 298, NWU= 479, ROU = 312 and Savaii = 322. AUA had a total of 8 supervisors, NWU = 11, ROU = 13 and Savaii = 10. Each supervisor had about 50 enumerators to visit and monitor during the enumeration period.
The interviewing was conducted by the census enumerators for a selected number of households from an enumeration area. Since the number of households per enumeration area ranged from 5 to more than 100 households per area, the distribution of households for interviews and remuneration was arranged accordingly. For instance: 4-6 interviewed households was paid at $100 Samoan tala; 7-15 interviewed households = $200; 16-22 interviewed households = $300; and; 23-30 interviewed households = $400 tala.
To conduct the interviews, the census office gave all the enumerators their sets of questionnaires, manuals of instructions, lists of households, pens, bags, and maps of their designated areas. On the field, the enumerators were monitored by their respective area supervisors. The area supervisors main role was to ensure that the enumerators have visited all the allocated households in their given areas and that the interviews have been done within the specified period. The supervisors were also responsible to deal with any refusal households on the field. In order to assist the supervisors field visits, each supervisor was given a transport for four weeks to carry out their field supervisions.The enumerators can also request the supervisors to use the vehicles if they work in very isolated and distant areas.
Both the enumerators and the supervisors were given control forms to report the date of interviews by the enumerators and the date of checks by the supervisors.The control forms were also deigned to provide an initial manual count of the population before the final digital counts.
To check the control forms and the quality of the completed questionnaires, the field editors commuted from the main office to visit the enumerators and their respective supervisors. Given the limited number of field editors per area; the field supervisors arranged school buildings for all enumerators in their respective areas to meet at least twice a week so that the team of field editors (about 10 per team) to come in to check the control forms as well as the quality of completed questionnaires.
The field editor was responsible for reviewing each questionnaire during the date of visit, checking for missed questions, skip errors, fields incorrectly completed and checking for inconsistencies in the data before submission to the main office.
Once all questionnaires were checked on the field then individual enumerators were told to submit their completed questionnaires to the main office. At the main office the office editors again went through the full set of questionnaires for final quality checks before sign off for payment. The enumerators and supervisors control forms will also be collected by the office editors.
A total of 1,452 enumerators and supervisors were recruited from the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC) and several employees from other government ministries to conduct the census enumeration. MESC has the biggest labour force in Samoa hence recruitment was not an issue. Given the teachers tertiary qualification and managing public relations the teachers were easy to train.
The first training of census enumeration was conducted in the first week of October 2011 for all established staffs of the Samoa Bureau of Statistics for awareness purpose. The second training was conducted for forty part-time staffs who were hired to: assist census training; conduct enumeration in institutions and selected areas; assist census fieldwork monitoring, and to assist in the conduct of quality checks of completed questionnaires during and after the census enumeration.The third training on how to conduct and monitor the supervision of enumeration was conducted for the district supervisors who were also the school inspectors and senior staffs of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture.The fourth and final training was conducted for one week from the 17th to 22nd of October 2011 for a total of 1,409 census enumerators for about 150 teachers per session. A total of two training teams of 30 staffs per team were set up to conduct the training simultaneously: one team was based in Upolu and another team was based in Savaii islands. Since the census enumeration was carried out during end-of-year exams for all schools in Samoa, the teachers were only able to attend the training for one day before the exam weeks. Therefore in order to ensure that the enumerators followed the training accordingly; a lot of extra efforts were invested on close monitoring of the enumerators performance on the field work by the hired staffs apart from the district supervisors to ensure that quality was achieved.
The actual data collection took about four weeks to complete, 2 weeks before the census date (November 7th, 2011) and two weeks afterwards. The four weeks allowed for sufficient time to conduct enumeration and to conduct final checks on the field by the supervisors and census field editors before final submission to the census office. Each enumerator submitted her/his own census forms to the main office which again went through final quality checks by the office editors before sign off for payment.
Interviews were conducted in Samoan and English, depending on the preference of the household members.
For the first time, the 2011 Census of Population and Housing is the first ever-census in Samoa that employed the use of global positioning system (GPS)as well as the scanning technology in data capturing.
(Details in the Analytical Report)
Data processing
Data editing was done in several stages.
- Office manual editing and coding
- Automatic scanning data entry edits
- Visual verification questionnaire edits
- Structure checking and completeness
- Structure checks of the CSPro data files
Editing program can be enquired at the Division of IT and Data Processing at email address: info.stats@sbs.gov.ws
Data appraisal
The census is a full-coverage of the population, therefore it is not a sample where sampling errors can be estimated.
There was no post-enumeration in the census 2011. One of the normal practices by the bureau to validate the total population counts from all villages, districts and regions of Samoa in any census is the manual count of the population in all areas during the on-going census enumeration.That information is collected by the enumerators and field supervisors during the enumeration using the Enumerators and Supervisors control forms. At the end of the enumeration, the control forms which mainly contained the number of males and females per enumeration area will be collected and compiled by the Census and Survey division as the first preliminary count of the census. In the census 2011, the preliminary population counts were compiled and launched as the 'Village Directory 2011' report after 4 weeks from end of the enumeration period.
The significance of the Village Directory report is it helps to provide a qiuick overall picture of the population growth and population distribution in all villages of the country relative to previous censuses. Most important of all is that the preliminary count will provide the basis for a decision whether a post-enumeration is warrant or otherwise. If the preliminary country is close to the projected population then the post-enumeration is assumed not worth the cost because it is expensive and it will delay all other census processes. In the census 2011, the preliminary count arrived at 186,340 which was more than the projected population of 184,032 as depicted in the Statistical Abstract 2009. Therefore the decision was made that post-enumeration was not worth it.
Data Access
| Name | URL | |
|---|---|---|
| Government Statistician | https://www.sbs.gov.ws/gs/ | info.stats@sbs.gov.ws |
| Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required? | Confidentiality declaration text |
|---|---|
| yes | Confidentiality of respondents is guaranteed by Articles 17a and 17b of the Statistics Act 1971 Before being granted access to the dataset, all users have to formally agree: 1. To make no copies of any files or portions of files to which s/he is granted access except those authorized by the data depositor. 2. Not to use any technique in an attempt to learn the identity of any person, establishment, or sampling unit not identified on public use data files. 3. To hold in strictest confidence the identification of any establishment or individual that may be inadvertently revealed in any documents or discussion, or analysis. Such inadvertent identification revealed in her/his analysis will be immediately brought to the attention of the data depositor. |
The Population and Housing Census 2011 microdata is available for distribution as licensed-use files. Please contact the identified contact persons to request for the dataset.
Conditions for use of licensed datasets are:
- The data and other materials provided by the Samoa Bureau of Statistics (SBS) will not be redistributed or sold to other individuals, institutions, or organizations without the written agreement of the SBS.
- The data will be used for statistical and scientific research purposes only. They will be used solely for reporting of aggregated information or the development of statistical models, and not for investigation of specific individuals or organizations.
- No attempt will be made to re-identify respondents, and no use will be made of the identity of any person or establishment discovered inadvertently. Any such discovery would immediately be reported to the SBS.
- No attempt, without prior approval, will be made to produce links among datasets provided by the SBS, or among data from the SBS and other datasets that could identify individuals or organizations, nor for destroying the business operations of individuals or organizations.
- Any books, articles, conference papers, theses, dissertations, reports, or other publications that employ data obtained from the SBS will cite the source of data in accordance with the Citation Requirement provided with the dataset.
- An electronic copy of all reports and publications based on the requested data will be sent to the SBS.
- The original collector of the data, the SBS, and the relevant funding agencies bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
- The primary and other researchers who will be involved in using the data must be identified.
- The researchers' organization must be identified as must a suitable representative of the organization who must be a signatory to the license.
- The intended use of the data including a list of expected outputs and the organization's dissemination policy must be identified.
- A formal agreement must be signed that the files will not be shared beyond the boundaries of the organization. In the case of a blanket agreement where it is agreed that the data can be used broadly within the receiving organization in a secure manner, the receiving organization must demonstrate a capacity to manage the data files in a secure manner (with an identified individual assigned formal responsibility for doing so) and each additional new user be made aware of the terms and conditions that apply to the data files. This must be achieved by having the users sign an affidavit. Where a blanket agreement exists and data security procedures are in place, it will not be necessary for the users to destroy the data after use is complete.
"Samoa Bureau of Statistics, Population and Housing Census 2011, version 1 of the public use dataset (August 2012), www.sbs.gov.ws"
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that SBS bears no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
(c) Samoa Bureau of Statistics (SBS), 2011
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACEO Census- Surveys and Demography | Samoa Bureau of Statistics | info.stats@sbs.gov.ws | https://www.sbs.gov.ws/ |
Metadata production
DDI-WSM-SBS-PHC-2011-v1
| Name | Abbreviation | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samoa Bureau of Statistics | SBS | Samoa Bureau of Statistics | Documentation of the population and housing census 2011 |
2023-08-31T11:00:00.000Z
Metadata version
Version 1 (April 2014). This is the first documentation of the Samoa Population and Housing Census 2011 created using the IHSN Toolkit.