ABOUT THE CENSUS POST ENUMERATION SURVEY
The Census Post Enumeration Survey (PES) is a household survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shortly after each Census of Population and Housing (Census), in order to provide an independent measure of Census coverage. This release presents estimates of undercount and overcount for the 2016 Census, resulting from the 2016 PES. This publication also details how the 2016 PES was conducted and how 2016 PES estimates have been calculated.
The 2016 PES included people from approximately 42,000 fully responding households across Australia. Information was collected for everyone present in the household. In addition to obtaining basic demographic information, questions were asked about each person's usual residence, their location on Census night, and any other addresses where they might have been counted in the Census.
The PES results are used to determine how many people should have been counted in the Census, how many people were missed (undercount) and how many were counted more than once or in error (overcount). The PES also measures the level of imputation error in Census processing (where imputation is used to assign values for persons in non-responding Census dwellings). Census net undercount is the difference between the PES estimate of how many people should have been counted in the Census and the actual Census count (including imputed persons in non-responding dwellings).
PES estimates of net undercount augment the Census counts for the purpose of deriving resident population estimates for Australia and its states and territories.
The Census counts presented in this publication may differ slightly from aggregate counts in other Census products as the counts used for PES estimation relate to usual residents of Australia and exclude those who reside in Other Territories (e.g. Norfolk Island or Antarctica). The Census counts in this publication include persons who were imputed into non-responding dwellings, as well as persons who responded to the Census.
ROUNDING
Estimates in this publication have been rounded. Proportions presented in this publication are based on unrounded estimates. Calculations using rounded estimates may differ from those published.
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