Residents not wanting to divulge their dates of birth has become an issue for the Department of Statistics and Economic Development in the Nevis Island Administration (NIA), as it conducts the 2021/22 Housing and Population Census.
Mrs. Dorriel Tross-Phillip, Director of the Department of Statistics told the Department of Information on June 21, 2022 that the date of birth is the most used format to compile the data received.
“One of the main problems that we have been experiencing is that persons are unwilling to give their date of birth, and one of the most used tabulated tables for the census is the populace by age range, and so if you do not give your date of birth for either you as the individual who is answering the question or the persons who are in your household, then we end up with a lot of gaps in our data and our data is not as reliable as it should be,” she explained.
The Head of the Statistics Department assured persons residing on Nevis that their names are not attached to the data received for processing and encouraged them to give their date of birth to the census enumerators.
“Your data, when it reaches the office, we are not looking at individuals. The names are removed and we are just looking at the data that we can divide the population into the different age groups.
