International Census Microdata Conference: Some resources recommended by speakers

International Census Microdata Conference: Findings and Futures

The SARS international census conference took place between 1st and 3rd September 2008. Attendees were an impressive international mix from both the provision and the researcher sides of the fence, including some very senior figures. The keynote speech was by Denise Lievesley, Special Advisor, UNECA, and President International Statistical Institute.

I will not go into details of individual presentations, copies of which can be found here http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/sars/conference/programme/index.html, however I will highlight a couple of references and resources recommended by speakers.

PAPERS

RSS (2003) report on Performance Indicators: Good, Bad and Ugly http://www.rss.org.uk/main.asp?page=1222

Scott, C (2005) Measuring up to the Measurement Problem: The role of statistics in evidence-based policy-making
http://www.paris21.org/documents/2086.pdf

Thomas, R and Walport, M, (2008) Data Sharing Review, Ministry of Justice
http://www.justice.gov.uk/reviews/datasharing-intro.htm

WEB RESOURCES

Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (has links to poverty research resources, though no direct links to data resources) http://www.crop.org/

Integrated European Census Microdata project
http://www.iecm-project.org/

IPUMS-International (free downloadable census microdata for 35 countries) https://international.ipums.org/international/

Migration in National Surveys http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/resource_guides/Migration_Nationalsurveys/child_db/home.php

Tom Watson’s blog (apparently he’s UK minister for statistics, but I can’t find any evidence of that on his website) http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/

NETWORKS

Canadian Research Data Centre Network http://www.statcan.ca/english/rdc/network.htm

RENCORE: Research Network for Comparative Research on Europe (can’t find much information on this, apart from a call for papers for a conference last year. I’m chasing up and I’ll update when I know more)

OTHER BITS OF CENSUS RELATED INFORMATION I PICKED UP

Brazil removes same sex couples from their surveys during the data editing process.

French census data for the last 5 censuses will shortly be released on-line at INSEE http://www.insee.fr/en/default.asp

Japan will soon open access to Census microdata.

Requests for access to confidential UK data must conform with UK national strategic priorities [eg. National Data Strategy, ESRC, ONS priorities]

Annual microdata for the American Community Survey starting in 2000 is now available via IPUMS.