This Saturday is the last day to complete the e-census

The most active respondents continue to be the residents of Tartu city and Harju county, where approximately 40% of the population aged 15 and older had completed the e-questionnaire by yesterday (January 16). At the same time, the response rate in Ida-Viru county was 15%. The share of enumerated persons is the smallest in older age groups, and especially among women, but also among young men.

“The more people provide their data, the more accurate and useful will be the decisions made on the basis of the data. I hope that young people can help their older relatives when necessary with logging into the e-census. Usually older people can do it themselves, but sometimes their computer skills are quite not there. In addition, I would like to emphasize that everyone should respond for themselves. This is particularly important to know for the people whose address is in the random sample: if you received a paper invitation in your post box, it means that all residents of this address have to complete the e-questionnaire, not just one family member. For example, if your partner has already filled in the questionnaire, it is great, but you should do it as well,” explained Liina Osila, Population and Housing Census project manager at Statistics Estonia.

The e-questionnaire is available at census.ee until the night of Saturday, January 22. “We are kindly asking, though, to complete the questionnaire before then, even as soon as possible. This way we can make sure that our systems can handle the traffic on the last day,” added Osila.

The answers from the mandatory sample addresses, where paper invitations were also sent, are especially welcome. “We definitely need answers from all residents of the survey sample addresses. The people who failed to fill in the questionnaire but who live at the random sample addresses will be contacted in February by census takers, who will then collect the data either by phone or in rare cases, during a home interview,” said Osila.

The online questionnaire can be filled in at census.ee after authenticating oneself with an ID-card, Mobile-ID or Smart-ID. It takes around five minutes per person to complete the questionnaire. The collected and analysed data will be published gradually starting from June until the end of 2022.

For further information: census.ee

E-census response rate by county (as on 16 January 2022):