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John Rumm John Rumm is offline
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Default The last census?

On 12/02/2020 10:11, newshound wrote:
On 12/02/2020 09:43, NY wrote:
"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...



How are people identified in a census - I've forgotten? Is it just by
name or does each person in a household have to give a unique ID such
as National Insurance number? If they gave NI number, it would make it
much easier for genealogists to trace the correct John Smith as he
moves from house to house between one census and the next.


I've heard it said that most Americans (land of the free) know their
social security number. I've always thought that the NI number had some
merits as a potentially unique identifier. There are places that use it
as your login ID on the computer system.


While NIs are supposed to be unique they have generally been avoided as
key fields for databases since its known that some folks have none, some
more than one, and many have one the same as someone else.

(I recall one (possibly apocryphal tale) that some early forms that
attempted to collect data from people asked for an NI number at a time
when many did not even know what one was. To be helpful they provided an
example of what an NI number looked like. The result was predictable in
that many just dutifully copied the example into their form submission,
result in one data record with loads of duplicates)

--
Cheers,

John.

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