'Jordan will conduct general population census in 2014'

By Rand Dalgamouni

AMMAN - Jordan will conduct a general population census in 2014, Department of Statistics (DoS) Director General Haidar Freihat said on Sunday.

The last general population and housing census, which was conducted in October 2004, put the population at 5.3 million, while according to the latest DoS estimates, the figure currently stands at 6.09 million.

In the opening session of a workshop for Arab countries on census evaluation and post-enumeration surveys, Freihat added that the DoS plans to release the results within a year after the census is conducted as opposed to two years on previous occasions.

The General Population and Housing Units Census is the largest statistical operation carried out in the country, according to the DoS website. It includes collecting and preparing various demographic and socio-economic data on all components of the population and housing units in the Kingdom without deletion or repetition to fulfill various administrative, statistical and executive purposes.

During yesterday’s session, United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) representative Margaret Mbogoni said the notion that population censuses are not perfect underscores the need to evaluate the overall quality of their results.

She noted that evaluating such results measures the quality of the data for proper interpretation and identifies the sources of error to avoid in future censuses.

Evaluation also “serve[s] as a basis for constructing a best estimate of census aggregates such as the total population”, or adjusts the results by taking the identified errors into account, Mbogoni explained.

Fathi Nsour, director general of the Arab Institute for Training and Research in Statistics (AITRS), said the UNSD recommends census evaluation as an independent stage of surveys.

The workshop is part of UNSD activities for the 2010 World Program for Population and Housing Censuses, which was launched in 2005, according to Mbogoni.

She added that under the program, each UN member state is urged to conduct a census at least once between 2005 and 2014.

“By the end of 2010, 14 out of 22 Arabic-speaking countries will have conducted their 2010 censusة [and] five plan to undertake a census in 2014,” she noted.

Representatives of statistics departments from 12 Arab countries are attending the four-day workshop, organized by UNSD in cooperation with the DoS and AITRS.

22 November 2010

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://jordantimes.com/?news=31968.