Page tools:
 Print Page
 Print All
| ||||
Introduction
non-family criteria
Interviewer-based collections 6. The initial requirement in the interviewer based question module is to determine the usual residents of the household. This is achieved by asking the following question: 'What are the names of all the people who usually live here?' 7. Each person named is assigned a row number and a person number. The first person named is identified as Person 1, the second person as Person 2 and so on. Self-completed collections 8. Respondents are prompted with instructions to help select a suitable household reference person as the first person listed on self-completion collection forms as this facilitates family coding and minimises subsequent re-processing. For example, in the 2001 Census of Population and Housing the instruction given is: 'Enter the householder or any adult household member as 'Person 1', and if present, the spouse or partner as 'Person 2''. 9. Once again, a suitable reference person can be substituted during data processing if the nominated person proves an unsuitable household reference person, for example, where a child is entered as Person 1. SUBSTITUTING A SUITABLE REFERENCE PERSON 10. In many cases, the person nominated as Person 1 will prove to be a suitable reference person. 11. There will be times when Person 1 is not the most suitable person to be the reference person because he or she does not fulfil the criteria for determining the household reference person. The household reference person, whilst primarily a device to assist coding and processing relationship data, can also be used to create output variables (e.g. occupation of household reference person). It is therefore necessary to use the set of hierarchical criteria for identifying reference persons so that the criteria are consistently applied to determine the household reference person. Depending upon the methodology being used to collect relationship data, this substitution of an appropriate reference person for an inappropriate one can be done after the collection of data, or through an input editing system. One family households 12. Where a person who is not appropriate to be the household reference person has been nominated as Person 1, the relationships described in the raw data may be unsuitable for determining 'Relationship in household'. For example, if the household reference person is a son in a one family household comprised of his mother, father and sister the data would need to be processed so that one of the parents is the household reference person and each other family member is described in relation to that parent. This reallocation of the household reference person is required for more efficient 'Relationship in household' coding, since the classification is designed to classify children in relation to their parents, rather than parents in relation to their children. Multi-family households 13. Another case when the household reference person may need to be modified is in a multi-family household. Multi-family households constitute only a small proportion of the total number of households. In the 2001 Census, only 0.9% of households were identified as multi-family households. 14. In households that contain more than one family, a family reference person must be identified for each family. The following example illustrates how further processing is required when the second question (on any closer relationships) is asked. Consider a five person household consisting of two sisters (Maria and Christina), their respective husbands (Juan and Manuel) and an unrelated individual (Fred). If Maria is chosen as the household reference person then Manuel is coded as a brother-in-law (see diagram 1). Diagram 1 15. At the family level, however, the household is considered as consisting of two families and as Maria is initially selected as Person 1 and therefore the household reference person, either Christina or Manuel must be chosen as the family reference person for the second family (see diagram 2). Diagram 2 16. Note that question two in the interviewer based question module (see the Standard Question Module above) reveals a two family household if any of the four persons in either family is chosen as Person 1. In this example, when the correct procedures are applied and the best choice is made for the household reference person, a two family household is quickly identified with each family being coded as a couple family without children having no other related individuals in the household. In the example, Fred is an unrelated individual living in a family household. Note also that if Fred were chosen as Person 1, even though the second question would eventually establish a two family household, the existence of the sibling relationship between Maria and Christina would not be detected. SELECTING A HOUSEHOLD REFERENCE PERSON 17. Once the household members have been allocated to families (assuming there are families present), the responses provided on the collection form are further processed so that a reference person is chosen for each family. For clarification of the rules for determining families in multi-family households refer to 'Rules for Identifying Families' in the standard for 'Family composition'. 18. To select each family reference person the standard hierarchical set of criteria for identifying reference persons is applied to each family from the top down. Only then is one of the family reference persons designated as the household reference person. To select the household reference person in a multi-family household, a further set of hierarchical criteria (which follows the standard hierarchic set of criteria for identifying reference persons) are applied to the family reference persons as follows: family criterion - one of the partners in a registered or de facto marriage
family criterion - a lone parent
non-family criteria
|
||||