Census Processing and Analysis of Data
Conducting a Census: Processing and Analysis of Data
Note: See Census Conducting.For most of the 19th century in the United States and Canada, census data were tabulated and compiled by hand, without the aid of machines. Manual processing was very slow, and some figures were obsolete by the time they were published. The invention of mechanical tabulating devices in the late 19th century made processing of the data much faster and improved the accuracy of the results. Today, census questionnaires are processed primarily on computers and electronic equipment. Besides speeding the processing of results, computers have made it possible to perform sophisticated analyses on the data and to draw correlations between various social and economic characteristics of the country. For example, using census data, statisticians can easily determine the number of people living in Houston, Texas. But they can also determine the number of Houston women between the ages of 25 and 30 who have completed high school and are currently employed.
To process the data from hundreds of millions of paper questionnaires, the U.S. Census Bureau employs an advanced system that scans every questionnaire into an electronic image. Then the images are analyzed by computer software that can recognize when a check-box item on the questionnaire has been marked with a pencil or pen. Optical character recognition software analyzes handwritten responses on the questionnaire and translates them into electronic data. Once in electronic form, the data can be analyzed and turned into statistics. Unreadable or ambiguous responses are checked by census clerks and manually keyed into the computer. (1)
Census
- Census
- Census Information
- Census Conducting
- Census Planning
- Census Information Collection
- Census Processing and Analysis of Data
- Census Publication of Results
- Census in the U.S.
- U.S. Censuses Origins
- U.S. Early Censuses
- United States: Censuses Breakthroughs in Automation
- Modern Censuses in the United States
- Census in Canada
- Early Censuses in Canada
- Modern Censuses in Canada
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