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Inclusion of Jedi in census statistics
Ganesh Sittampalam made this Freedom of Information request to Office for National Statistics
The request was successful.
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
17 June 2008
Dear Sir or Madam,
In this spreadsheet, you list several religions - not including
Jedi - explicitly, and categorise other people into "Other
religions" (150,720 in England and Wales), "No religion"
(7,709,267) and "Religion not stated" (4,010,658):
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Ex...
In this URL, you say that there are 390,127 Jedi in England and
Wales. Clearly they cannot have been included in the "Other
religions" category in the figures above:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/...
I have browsed the relevant sections of the following document
without finding an explanation of what religions were and were not
included in this category:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/c...
I therefore request a full list of what has been included in this
"Other religions" category, together with any explanations you hold
on why particular responses to the relevant question on the 2001
census form were or were not included. I would also like to know
how any responses that were not categorised under "Other religions"
(or any of the explicitly listed religions) were categorised.
Yours faithfully,
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
16 July 2008
Dear Sir or Madam,
The 20 working days allowed for a response under the Freedom of
Information Act is now over - please could you respond immediately?
Yours sincerely,
Ganesh Sittampalam
From: Census CustomerServices
Office for National Statistics
21 July 2008
Dear Sir/madam
I refer to your e-mail regarding inclusion of Jedi in Census Statistics.
Apologies for the delay in replying.
I have attached a file which shows the full classification of religions in
England and Wales and how they were grouped for the Key Statistics KS07 as
shown in the link you have provided.
(See attached file: Religion categories.xls)
I have also attached a link to the 2001 Census form.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/...
The religion question was voluntary in the 2001 Census. Respondents were
given the opporunity to write in their religion in the 'any other
religion' box. All 'write in' religions would have been assigned to one
of the codes in the above file. Jedi was included so that it could be
autocoded rather than referred for manual intervention as there was a
campaign to encourage people to enter this on the form.
I hope you find the information useful. Please contact us again if you
require any further assistance.
Regards
Penny Wilkinson
Deputy Manager
show quoted sections
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
21 July 2008
Dear Census CustomerServices,
Thank you. Please could you confirm whether or not you hold any
information (e.g. minutes of internal meetings or any other
documents) about the decisions to make those categorisations? The
decision to categorise "Jedi Knight" as "No religion" whilst many
other equally "non-standard" answers were categorised as "Other" is
particularly perplexing to me.
If you do hold any information on the subject please could you
provide a copy of it as I asked in my original request.
Yours sincerely,
Ganesh Sittampalam
From: Census CustomerServices
Office for National Statistics
13 August 2008
Dear Ganesh
There are no records of any formal decision to allocate responses of 'Jedi
Knight' to the 2001 Census religion question to the output category 'No
religion'. The recollection of those ONS officials who were involved in the
coding of the various write-in responses to the 2001 question was that
although a separate code had been allocated to such responses (solely in
order to facilitate the automatic coding of what had been anticipated to be
a significant number of such responses following the popular campaign to
recognise 'Jedi Knight' in the earlier New Zealand Census) there had been
no discussion on this particular issue by the formal advisory group, the
Religious Affiliation Sub Group of the Output Working Group prior to the
Census, and no requirements made by users for any such information to be
recognised in outputs.
You have the right to have this decision reviewed internally by an internal
review process and, if you remain unhappy with the decision, by the
Information Commissioner. If you would like to have the decision reviewed
please write to Mike Hughes, Group Director, National Statistics Policy
Group, Office for National Statistics, 1 Myddelton Street, Islington,
London, EC1R 1UW.
Regards
Penny Wilkinson
show quoted sections
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