POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUSES IN SLOVAKIA ON THE WEBSITE

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POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUSES IN SLOVAKIA ON
THE WEBSITE

• Miroslav Hudec
• Pavol Büchler
• INFOSTAT Bratislava
• MSIS Geneva 8.-10.5.2007

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Introduction

• Brief history of censuses
• Censuses in Slovakia
• About censuses on the website
• Censuses from years 1980 to 2001
• Censuses from years 1921 to 1970
• Conclusions and future improvements

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Brief history of censuses
Population censuses belong to the oldest
statistical actions in the human history. The
effort to find the number of inhabitants of an
area is as old as all advanced civilisations are.
The first ancient censuses were realised mainly
for the military and tax purposes. In Middle
Age and in first centuries of modern times
certain registration actions were performed in
Europe. More or less regular censuses involving
the whole population were realised in Europe only
from the half of 18th century. Items like,
biological, social and economic characteristics
were gradually added to surveys.
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Censuses in Slovakia
In the area of Slovakia, then a part of Hungaria,
is as the beginning of organised statistical
surveys considered the year 1715. In this year
was realised the registration of population aimed
to family heads of groups whose were the subject
to taxation. The first census including all
inhabitants was realised in Slovakia in years
1778 1785. The monitored items included name,
age, marital status, class rank, employment of
registered persons and data concerning the
population migration. In 1847 was in Hungaria
established the Statistical Office with an
routine service and from this year censuses were
performed in ca 10 year periods. From 1869 were
censuses realised according to the principles
defined by international statistical congresses.
As early as 1890 the data were processed also by
Hollerith punch card machines.
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Censuses on the website

• The aim of this project was to enhance the
  knowledge of domestic and foreign general
  audience and professionals about modern
  population and housing censuses realised in the
  area of Slovakia. The project team were analyzed
  censuses from years 1921 to 2001. The solution
  offers
• detailed results and other related basic
  information (legislation, historical
• context, questionnaires, processing
  technologies, maps...)
• unified accessibility and comprehensibility by
  presenting data and other
• relevant documents in one place and in the
  unified form,
• comparison selected indicators in their
  historical context (the website contains
• time series, some of which start in 1848),
• open scalable solution allowing trouble-free
  expansion in the future.

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Censuses from years 1980 to 2001
The data from these censuses, which were already
in the census time computer processed, were
available in digital form as Oracle databases.
The data from 1980 and 1991 years were originally
stored as text files and converted to Oracle
within the frame of another project in year 2004.
However, the data from these censuses were in
different formats and stored in separate
databases. As the first step in the project
realisation the creation of the three -
dimensional data structure (time, territory and
indicator), the conversion to the unified data
format and the storage of data into this database
was realised. This solution allows the simple
retrieval of stored data and their use in the
presentation form. Metadata for search and
navigation are interconnected with descriptive
metadata to allow easy navigation across
territorial unit structure and table templates.
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Censuses from years 1980 to 2001
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Censuses from years 1921 to 1970
The data sources from these censuses were
available in paper form only. From the 1970
census, which was the first census where data
were computer processed, electronic text files
exist, but they are incomplete, so the project
team had to work with paper data
sources. Selected tables from paper documents
found in archives, were converted into electronic
form and finally transformed into HTML format.
Unlike the tables of results from the years 1981
2001, which are created from database records
and table templates according to the user's
request dynamically, the tables of results from
the 1921 - 1970 censuses are static HTML files.
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Censuses from years 1921 to 1970
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Conclusions and future improvements
The website is realised as a compact entity
almost all web pages (except some thematic maps)
are presented in one window. The authors paid
maximal attention to the user friendliness of the
system, so that the navigation accross the web
pages would be comprehensible and efficient from
the users point of view. The application was
prepared with the perspective of its future
enhancement by results of the next census planned
for the year 2011.
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Conclusions and future improvements

• Future improvements
• to enlarge the amount of presented data to the
  municipality level (1980-2001),
• to expand the amount of time series,
• to convert data from older censuses into
  similar form as the last censuses
• and present them in dynamic way,
• to add a search engine working across the
  website,
• to enhance the English version of presentation
  as some information is
• available only in Slovak language,
• to cooperate with statisticians and historians
  to present data from
• censuses older than 1921 census.
• The address of the Website is http//sodb.infostat
  .sk/sodb/index.htm

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• Thank you for your attention