Ghana - Population and Housing Census 2000

Start	End	Cycle
2000-03-26	2000-04-10	N/A

Start	End	Cycle
2000-03	2010-03	N/A

Face-to-face [f2f]
A trial census was held in 4 selected districts in July 1999 for 10 days. This was followed by the training of 5,400 trainers from January 24th- February 15th 2000. The trainers were to be come supervisors of th main census.

A total of 27,100 enumerators were engaged for the census. The enumerators were sent out in teams of 5 under one supervisor. In all there were 220 senior field suppervisors who worked in the 110 districts of t he country.

The fieldwork began on 19th March 2000 with identification of EA boundaries, listing of structures, enumeration of institutional population and floating population, and continued with the enumeration of the household population after Census Night (26th March 2000) for two weeks. A mopping-up exercise to cover about 10 percent uncompleted areas, mainly in Accra and Tema, was carried out until the end of April. The coverage of the population was mainly on de-facto basis, but a questionnaire item was provided to enable the usual resident population to be obtained.

Questionaires were in the English language but enumerators, as part of their trainning were encouraged to use the local language when the need arose.

Consultation with Users
Work on the census questionnaire started in 1998 bearing in mind the data needs of the country. A simple questionnaire was sent to the ministries, relevant government departments, research institutions, relevant departments in the universities, private business associations and other users seeking information on the following:
· whether the organization had used any previous census data
· the specific census data used
· what use the census data were put
· any data that were needed but had not been provided in previous censuses
· general comments on population censuses.
Response to the questionnaire was encouraging; some respondents sent in the completed forms while others came over to discuss their data needs.

Selection of Topics
Selecting topics for inclusion in the questionnaire involved the review and consideration of the following:
· topics covered in the 1984 population census,
· recommended topics from the United Nations Principles and Recommendations for the 2000 round of Population and Housing Censuses,
· data requests and suggestions from users based on the answers to the questionnaire sent to them,
· list of users' requests compiled by the Statistical Service over a period of time.

A number of meetings were held at both the Census Secretariat and the Technical Advisory Committee levels to discuss the topics and requests. Decisions on topics for inclusion were based on the relevance of topics and the data needs of the country as well as practical considerations of application of concepts.

The final questionnaire consisted of 15 questions on housing characteristics and 20 questions on population covering the following areas:
· household characteristics
· geographical location and internal migration
· demographic and social characteristics
· economic characteristics
· literacy and education
· fertility and mortality.

All the population topics investigated in 1970 and 1984 censuses were maintained, because they were considered as still relevant to the country's data needs, especially in terms of maintaining a time series of socio-economic data.
The questionaires were published in English.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation
Ghana Statistical Service	GSS	Office of the President

Interviewing teams comprised of 5 enumerators with one supervisor per team.

For the main census, therefore, the decision was to have enumerators do the coding and have supervisor do the checking. Senior supervisors were also expected to have a sample check of the work done by supervisors

The quality control rules for Supervisors were detailed to check the quality of work of Enumerators for the entire period of fieldwork. The control activities started with the Supervisor going round with his/her Enumerators to identify EA boundaries within his/her Supervision Area (SA) and with other SAs. In addition, Supervisors assessed the sizes and spread of the EAs and, where necessary, split them.

Supervisors' control of enumeration involved coverage, consistency and final checks, using the Field Supervisor's Record Book, in which the work of Enumerators was carefully recorded for monitoring.

With regard to coverage checks, Supervisors went round EAs and localities and counted houses, paying particular attention to corners and obscure places. Supervisors randomly selected houses in each EA, identified the households and listed all the persons who slept there on the census night. In addition, the Supervisor completely re-enumerated a randomly selected household and used the information to verify the coverage of each Enumerator's work.