2024-08-07 02:21:36
The university professor appreciated the inclusion of questions about disability and immigration in the 2024 Census, although she admitted that it also highlighted the insecurity crisis that the country is experiencing.
Sociologist Macarena Orchard made a positive evaluation of the 2024 Censuswho highlighted the efforts of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) “to try to cover as much of the population as possible” in the process that culminated on Wednesday, July 31.
The professor at the School of Sociology of the Diego Portales University also valued the progress “in security protocols with respect to the census takers, as well as in thethe inclusion of questions that had not been asked before, for example relating to disability or immigration“, as he stressed in the dialogue with THE DYNAMO.
However, for the academic the process also “It highlighted the insecurity crisis we are experiencing, which was reflected in the fear of opening the door to the census taker.. And, on the other hand, the existence of certain mistrust towards the collection of data. In that sense, The spread of false information was very harmful to the process“, he assured.
Macarena Orchard said that although we must wait for the delivery of the census coverage rate to evaluate whether the process was positive or negative, “from what I have been able to find out, The reports are better than one might have expected, because it achieved a fairly significant percentage of population coverage.and it will reveal many things that we need to know about the population in order to continue doing studies in the future.”
Distrust and insecurity in the 2024 Census
Regarding her evaluation of the process from a communication point of view, the researcher from the Center for Conflict and Social Cohesion Studies (COES) also highlighted “the effort on the part of the Government, which invited the population to open the door to the census, But I think that the level of distrust and insecurity that this would provoke in the population was not anticipated.“.
In this regard, he stated that “greater communication efforts are required, which have to do with educating the population in terms of knowing why such precise statistical surveys are needed. And that is because These are crucial for the development of public policies and because they become the sampling framework for any study that is done in the future.“.
Addressing the feeling of insecurity that affected the work of the census takers, Macarena Orchard said that it is about “a phenomenon that is taking hold and will probably last for some timebecause it is associated with deep themes and not only with the figure, for example, of a census taker or pollster, but also It is based on the widespread feeling of fear that exists today.“.
For her, this shows that “in general It will be difficult for people to open the doors to any data collection process, not just the census.“.
“We have been observing this in general in the world of social studies, because Before the census we already realized that there were difficulties for people to open the doors of their houses“, he added.
According to the warning, for this situation to be reversed “two things would have to happen: On the one hand, we would have to reduce general subjective insecurity and, on the other, we should have permanent education campaigns. regarding the relevance of these processes.”
Online census for the future?
Among the aspects that the academic of the 2024 Census valued, she highlighted that The INE looked for various alternatives so that people could complete the processincluding the ability for people to access the Online Census to provide their data online.
However, and although he emphasizes that currently “there are many processes that are moving towards online and one could imagine a future in which this does occur, in the case of the census it is very difficult, because for example The poorest and most vulnerable areas have less access to digital tools, which could lead to the exclusion of certain sectors of the population.which are already difficult to access.”
“Perhaps we could move towards a hybrid system, which in fact was what ended up happening since the possibility of self-completing the census record was enabled.“, concluded the UDP professor.