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This paper has been reproduced as submitted.
It has been issued without formal editing.
INTRODUCTION
Brunei Darussalam will be conducting
the 2001 Population and Housing Census in August
this year. The responsible agency in conducting
the census is the Statistics Division, Department
of Economic Planning and Development, Prime Minister's
Department with the assistance from several Government
ministries and departments.
The information collected in
this census will provide a detailed stocktaking
of the population, and makes it possible to assess
how and in what ways Brunei's population has changed
since the previous census, which was held in 1991.
It also enables a quantitative assessment to be
made of some of the achievements and progress
that have resulted from Brunei Darussalam's Five
Year Development Plans. Further, the 2001 census
data will provide an invaluable benchmark and
background for formulating economic development
plans and policies. Apart from their extensive
use in government planning, the 2001 census results
will be helpful to the private sector for its
projects and decision making, as well as for academic
and research purposes. The 2001 census data will
also serve as an updated frame for future sample
surveys to be conducted by the Department and
other agencies.
DATA
COLLECTION
The 2001 Census will be conducted
in two stages. The first stage will be held from
7 to 14 May 2001, which involves a house listing
of dwelling units and households, and obtaining
a preliminary count of the population. The second
stage, to be carried out from 22 to 31 May 2001,
involves obtaining information on individual household
members, household and dwelling characteristics
through face-to-face interviews between census
enumerators and heads of households. The 2001
Census is conducted on a de facto basis
and the midnight on 21 August 2001 has been designated
as census night.
During the initial planning
for the 2001 Census, some serious thought was
given to adopting another approach to census taking
in Brunei Darussalam to complement the traditional
method of fieldwork interviews. The idea was to
gather available administrative data from other
government departments such as the Immigration
and National Registration Department and the Public
Services Department to form the population database
so that some of the personal information of the
individual would be pre-filled in the census schedules
thus lessening the burden of the enumerators.
Due to time constraint and limited resources,
this idea has not been fully explored and implemented.
However, the Computer Section of The Statistics
Division will continue in its efforts to make
this possible in other upcoming surveys and the
2001 population database will be used as the starting
point.
DATA
PROCESSING, STORAGE AND ANALYSIS
The information collected in
the census will lose its value if it is not processed
quickly and the results subsequently released
on a timely basis. With this in mind, the Computer
Section has made its data processing strategy,
also taking into account the currently available
hardware/software and technical staff in the Department.
Large scale data processing
such as for a population and housing census still
make use of the mainframe-based system because
of the readily available network set-up in the
Department, although smaller surveys have now
started to switch to PC-based processing system.
Further, from past experience the mainframe system
has provided the best storage facility. Hence,
it was decided to use the mainframe system for
data-entry and validation while tabulation and
analysis will be done in PC's using the SPSS statistical
package.
After the fieldwork operations,
all the census schedules will go through a thorough
manual editing, followed by coding of the items
and then data-entry. In order to speed up the
data processing, the coding and data-entry will
be done in two phases. The first phase will be
for the items that are pre-coded or have simple
codes such as for date of birth, race and residential
status. The second phase will be for items that
have more difficult coding system such as for
occupation and industry.
Data entry applications, on-line
validations and some basic tabulations for population
and housing count are developed in the mainframe
system using RDBMS INGRES running under UNIX.
The finalised data will be stored in the mainframe.
It will also be downloaded for tabulation and
analysis use in PC's and later stored in CD-ROMs
and diskettes.
DATA
DISSEMINATION
The results of the 2001 Census
will be made public in a series of releases. The
first will be a preliminary report containing
basic information and count of the population
and housing. This will be followed by printed
publications and later on specialised reports
or monographs. The data and reports will also
be made available in diskettes and CD-ROMs. At
the moment, the department is in the process of
developing a statistical page in the Department's
website and so some of the data and reports from
the 2001 Census will also be available on the
Internet. Other results and detailed tabulations
from the census will also be available on request
and will be provided to the users either in hard
or soft copy.
Presented at the:
Workshop on Population Data Analysis, Storage
and Dissemination Technologies
27-30 March 2001
ESCAP, Bangkok, Thailand
Attended by:
Ms Marilyn Linggi Teo Lai
Mohd. Yahya Hj Omar
Statistics Division
Department of Economic Planning and Development
Prime Minister's Department
Brunei Darussalam
March 2001
