CENSUSES IN EUROPE DURING THE 1990S - FROM DIVERSITY OF NATIONAL PRACTICE TO INTERNATIONAL COMPARABILITY OF RESULTS

Most European governments have accepted the recommendations of international organizations to enumerate their populations and their principal characteristics in 1990 and 1991. However, in certain countries the value of the census - the instrument normally used for this purpose - has been questioned, either because it is regarded as an intrusion on privacy, or because of its complexity and cost. Population registers have increasingly come to be used as a substitute for, or complement to, a simpler census, or large-scale sample surveys to limit the number of questions which needed to be answered by respondents, to supplement the information available in population registers, or even to replace the census when it could not be taken on the stipulated date. These different methods of data collection have led to many difficulties (e.g. in definitions of residence, marital status, or household type) and the quality of the results obtained has differed in different countries. It is more than ever necessary to strive for international standardization in this area.