WHEREAS, El Lexhatx Title C Article 1.2.2.2 states:
"Other questions on the Talossan Census shall be identical to the questions on the last census. These questions may be changed by the Chancery, either of its own volition or on request from the Seneschal, but any changes shall be approved by the Ziu, without needing to go through committee."WHEREAS, a biennial Census is due this summer; and
WHEREAS, several points regarding the current set of questions were raised following the last Census in 2023; so
THEREFORE be it enacted by the King, Cosa and Senäts in Ziu assembled, that the first Census following passage of this Act shall contain the following questions, pursuant to El Lexhatx Title C Article 1.2.2.2 and in addition to those provided by C.1.2.2.1:
- Gender, with the listed options of Male, Female, Nonbinary, and Other
- Age, with the listed options of 14-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, and 60+ years
- Civil Status
- Household size, expressed as a range from 1 to 10+
- Industry, instructing respondents "choose category that best describes your occupation" and with the listed options of Agriculture, Arts, Business and Finance, Clergy and Community Services, Construction and Trades, Education and Childcare, Engineering and Computer Science, Healthcare, Homemaking, Hospitality and Food Services, Legal Services, Manufacturing, Military, Sales, Sciences, Transportation, Unemployed, and Other.
- Ethnic self-identification
- Religious Affiliation, with the listed options of Buddhism, Christianity (Orthodox), Christianity (Protestant), Christianity (Roman Catholic), Hinduism, Islam (Shia), Islam (Sunni), Judaism, Nonreligious, and Other.
- Education Level
- Household Income, with options allowing for a wide range of answers and denominated in both louise and euro and United States dollar equivalents.
- Location of physical residence, with a suggestion respondents reply down to the precision required by provincial catchment legislation.
FURTHERMORE, the Chancery may privately contact respondents whose place of residence doesn't match their current provincial assignment to advise them of their right to move to their province of residence if they so choose.
Uréu q'estradra så,
Sir Lüc da Schir, Secretary of State
(This set of questions is almost entirely lifted from discussions that took place around the time of the past Census.)
I'm always surprised by some of these questions. In France (and I believe the rest of Europe), it is generally illegal to collect data on race, religion, or sexual orientation in surveys due to strict privacy and anti-discrimination laws.
There are very limited exceptions, only with explicit consent, and only for specific purpose such as public interest studies or anti-discrimination research. Usually only under the supervision of official bodies like CNIL, the French data protection authority.
What do we want to do with these answers ?
I'm not a fan of the French Republic's official blindness to ethnicity (though I understand the historical reasons for it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup)), but I honestly don't see what the Chancery needs to know people's religious affiliations for, and in my case that's an essay question anyway
Generally speaking, it can be really helpful to know how the composition of the country is changing over time. Even if we don't have any immediate use for this information, it's great to help us understand trends and think about the future. Obviously, questions about religion and philosophy are attempting to provide simple categories for complicated ideas, but it's great to be able to have some understanding of our people, even if it will always be imperfect.
Quote from: Sir Lüc on June 08, 2025, 12:23:44 PM- Gender, with the listed options of Male, Female, Nonbinary, and Other
- Household size, expressed as a range from 1 to 10+
- Industry, instructing respondents "choose category that best describes your occupation" and with the listed options of Agriculture, Arts, Business and Finance, Clergy and Community Services, Construction and Trades, Education and Childcare, Engineering and Computer Science, Healthcare, Homemaking, Hospitality and Food Services, Legal Services, Manufacturing, Military, Sales, Sciences, Transportation, Unemployed, and Other.
- Ethnic self-identification
- Religious Affiliation, with the listed options of Buddhism, Christianity (Orthodox), Christianity (Protestant), Christianity (Roman Catholic), Hinduism, Islam (Shia), Islam (Sunni), Judaism, Nonreligious, and Other.
- Household Income, with options allowing for a wide range of answers and denominated in both louise and euro and United States dollar equivalents.
- Place of residence, with a suggestion respondents reply down to the precision required by provincial catchment legislation.
This is a good general list of interesting information to collect nationally. One suggestion: we might want to remove the denominational options for Christianity and Islam. There are breakdowns in Buddhism and Judaism if we apply that approach universally so we might just want to leave only higher level options.
No questions should be mandatory
Age is missing, as well as spoken languages, education level, presence on which social media, hobbies
Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on June 08, 2025, 07:48:45 PMOne suggestion: we might want to remove the denominational options for Christianity and Islam.
There are many in the Christian religions who would consider a protestant as NOT a Christian and many who would consider a Catholic as NOT a Christian. I'm unsure if the same thing applies to Suni and Shia in Islam or not. I see no issue with keeping this distinction and I don't think it was an issue during the last census.
-Txec R
Some questions should be mandatory. At the very least, each option might simply include "decline to state".
-Txec R
Quote from: King Txec on June 09, 2025, 10:22:33 AMQuote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on June 08, 2025, 07:48:45 PMOne suggestion: we might want to remove the denominational options for Christianity and Islam.
There are many in the Christian religions who would consider a protestant as NOT a Christian and many who would consider a Catholic as NOT a Christian. I'm unsure if the same thing applies to Suni and Shia in Islam or not. I see no issue with keeping this distinction and I don't think it was an issue during the last census.
-Txec R
Would "Christian (Other)" and "Islam (Other)" options satisfy the denominational concerns?
Quote from: King Txec on June 09, 2025, 10:22:33 AMQuote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on June 08, 2025, 07:48:45 PMOne suggestion: we might want to remove the denominational options for Christianity and Islam.
There are many in the Christian religions who would consider a protestant as NOT a Christian and many who would consider a Catholic as NOT a Christian. I'm unsure if the same thing applies to Suni and Shia in Islam or not. I see no issue with keeping this distinction and I don't think it was an issue during the last census.
-Txec R
As someone who was raised catholic and recalls protestants claiming we were not real christians I am not sure that this is something we want to accommodate, King. You are probably not intending to suggest that but your example brought forward that immediate experience from my childhood. We should either add distinctions for the other religions (Judaism has reform, orthodox, reconstructionist, conservative, etc.) and (Buddhism has theravada, mahayana, and vajrayana. Or we should remove them for all for the purposes of a non-preferential standard as a global nation.
Quote from: Munditenens Tresplet on June 09, 2025, 11:08:51 AMQuote from: King Txec on June 09, 2025, 10:22:33 AMQuote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on June 08, 2025, 07:48:45 PMOne suggestion: we might want to remove the denominational options for Christianity and Islam.
There are many in the Christian religions who would consider a protestant as NOT a Christian and many who would consider a Catholic as NOT a Christian. I'm unsure if the same thing applies to Suni and Shia in Islam or not. I see no issue with keeping this distinction and I don't think it was an issue during the last census.
-Txec R
Would "Christian (Other)" and "Islam (Other)" options satisfy the denominational concerns?
It's more about the lack of options for Judaism and Buddhism which also have subdivisions and therefore being presented differently as options. I am thinking we should present the options in a standardized way so include denominations for all or remove denominations for all. Seeing that we really don't need the detailed information, I was suggesting removing the denominations for all of the faiths.
Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on June 09, 2025, 11:31:49 AMQuote from: King Txec on June 09, 2025, 10:22:33 AMQuote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on June 08, 2025, 07:48:45 PMOne suggestion: we might want to remove the denominational options for Christianity and Islam.
There are many in the Christian religions who would consider a protestant as NOT a Christian and many who would consider a Catholic as NOT a Christian. I'm unsure if the same thing applies to Suni and Shia in Islam or not. I see no issue with keeping this distinction and I don't think it was an issue during the last census.
-Txec R
As someone who was raised catholic and recalls protestants claiming we were not real christians I am not sure that this is something we want to accommodate, King. You are probably not intending to suggest that but your example brought forward that immediate experience from my childhood. We should either add distinctions for the other religions (Judaism has reform, orthodox, reconstructionist, conservative, etc.) and (Buddhism has theravada, mahayana, and vajrayana. Or we should remove them for all for the purposes of a non-preferential standard as a global nation.
I have similar experiences so I can empathize. I was simply pointing my understanding of things. If this is simplified or made more complex, I'm sure a consensus can be reached.
-Txec R
We have that breakdown because there are a lot of Christians in our country, and so those categories have usually held meaningful numbers of citizens. That has not been the case for any other faith tradition, I think, except possibly for a distinction between atheist and agnostic.
I guess the question is whether or not it is in some way unfair to not present category breakdowns in those instances when almost all of them will be empty? I think the usual decision has been that it is an excessive burden to put a ton of options that no one will use, since it makes it more difficult to take the census and it makes it less likely people will actually do the whole thing.
As usual, a much more practical concern about equity and fairness is found in caring for our ELL citizens. I don't know if we have any Theravedan Buddhists who will be offended not to find such an option on the census, but I know we have dozens of ELL citizens who will have very real difficulty with an extremely long census.
As much as possible, this thing should be useful and easy. That means trying to stick to the same questions and same answers for the most part, and minimizing options that will probably not be used by anyone.
On a side note: I think it is a little short-sighted to decide we don't need something like the subcategories at all. You don't know how that information might be useful someday, or what's interesting trends people might discover. We collect and publish this information as a public service, and we should keep doing that.
I mean, right off the top of my head, I can think of an obvious trend that it would be interesting to examine: former King John belonged to a specific faith and so did many of his family members and some friends, and I bet if we looked at the data, we would be able to see his influence on the population in an outsized way.
Right now, in my other country of the United States of America, government officials are killing data collection programs of all kinds because they don't see any immediate use for them. It is foolish behavior.
Quote from: King Txec on June 09, 2025, 10:22:33 AMThere are many in the Christian religions who would consider a protestant as NOT a Christian and many who would consider a Catholic as NOT a Christian. I'm unsure if the same thing applies to Suni and Shia in Islam or not.
Only the "takfiris" (ISIS types) would say that Shi'a Muslims were infidels, rather than "believers who've got it a bit wrong". That said, other branches of Islam are often considered beyond the pale, eg. the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan.
Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 09, 2025, 01:56:46 PMRight now, in my other country of the United States of America, government officials are killing data collection programs of all kinds because they don't see any immediate use for them. It is foolish behavior.
Well, they are establishing OTHER types of data collection. Like, registers of autistic people, or trans people. For later elimination. Which is precisely why France doesn't collect that material - a list of Jewish citizens was of great interest to the occupation/collaborationist authorities in WW2.
Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on June 09, 2025, 03:41:47 PMQuote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 09, 2025, 01:56:46 PMRight now, in my other country of the United States of America, government officials are killing data collection programs of all kinds because they don't see any immediate use for them. It is foolish behavior.
Well, they are establishing OTHER types of data collection. Like, registers of autistic people, or trans people. For later elimination. Which is precisely why France doesn't collect that material - a list of Jewish citizens was of great interest to the occupation/collaborationist authorities in WW2.
Yes, although I don't think they've actually proceeded to collecting that information, thankfully. I think they would have a hard time actually doing so, although we'll see.
Also, there's a very big difference between a list of names and an anonymized survey! I think it would be obviously insane to have a list of Jewish Talossans or something.
If we are able to gather useful and neat information without the breakdowns for any of the faiths and it is marginally easier to compile the data then I'd recommend we just remove the denominations. Or we simply add the options for the other faiths too. The current framework allows only Christians and Muslims to express a more specific subset. I don't think this is fair to Talossans who are not Christian or Muslim (however few they may be).
If we change the breakdown of the religion data, it would be somewhat less useful and somewhat less easy to compile, since it wouldn't be less easily compared to earlier versions. It's not a big deal, but we shouldn't make the change without a good reason. Hypothetical offense probably isn't a good reason.
I'm not Christian, by the way: I say this as a lover of data.
Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 09, 2025, 04:14:38 PMIf we change the breakdown of the religion data, it would be somewhat less useful and somewhat less easy to compile, since it wouldn't be less easily compared to earlier versions. It's not a big deal, but we shouldn't make the change without a good reason. Hypothetical offense probably isn't a good reason.
I'm not Christian, by the way: I say this as a lover of data.
That's fair, ultimately it's not that big of a deal, I agree. It was something that came to mind when reviewing the questions again. I don't think a change like this would have a big impact on data quality though.
Every method of bucketing is going to have some conceivable issue (for example, I'm Protestant, but I'm much closer to Catholicism than I am to some other denominations considered Protestant)
Consistency is probably best barring a very compelling reason to change.
Quote from: Sir Ian Plätschisch on June 10, 2025, 11:53:19 AMEvery method of bucketing is going to have some conceivable issue (for example, I'm Protestant, but I'm much closer to Catholicism than I am to some other denominations considered Protestant)
Consistency is probably best barring a very compelling reason to change.
But you have more self-descriptive options, as a Christian, to describe your faith than a Jewish, Buddhist, or non-religious respondent despite the fact that those faiths also have denominations or sectarian subdivisions too. That is the compelling reason in my opinion. We have no practical need for the additional options for Christians and Muslims beyond general interest and the data are also not tied to any existing or currently planned programs that I know of. What is questionable, then, to me is that we would have more interest in a breakdown for Christian and Muslim respondents than any other faith. If that is not the case then there seems little issue with making the change.
I am less concerned with consistency between censuses because this is not a huge and disruptive change. I am more concerned with consistency as the options are presented to respondents as a matter of fairness.
I'm curious why this wasn't an issue during the last census when you were the Seneschal but it seems like an issue now. I'm not casting any aspersions, but it does seem as if you might be looking for an issue when there really isn't much of one. Frankly, if this is really a big deal, we should just remove the religion question entirely if we really are making those of other faiths uncomfortable.
However, any data analyst will tell you that data must be consistent for it to mean anything, so changing the questions between censuses will give wrong conclusions. Of course, did we actually do anything at all with the data from the last census? The only effect I think it had in practice was maintenance of the citizenship rolls.
-Txec R
Quote from: King Txec on June 10, 2025, 02:47:44 PMI'm curious why this wasn't an issue during the last census when you were the Seneschal but it seems like an issue now. I'm not casting any aspersions, but it does seem as if you might be looking for an issue when there really isn't much of one. Frankly, if this is really a big deal, we should just remove the religion question entirely if we really are making those of other faiths uncomfortable.
However, any data analyst will tell you that data must be consistent for it to mean anything, so changing the questions between censuses will give wrong conclusions. Of course, did we actually do anything at all with the data from the last census? The only effect I think it had in practice was maintenance of the citizenship rolls.
-Txec R
It honestly didn't come to mind when I was seneschal probably because I was focused on matters related to working with you on the National Skills Survey if I recall correctly which was a great deal of fun. Unfortunately, that didn't end up developing into its intended purpose. I am not sure why we would rather remove the question entirely than just make it standardized in presentation. That is kind of a weird and overly dramatic response especially if it is not such a big issue, King. I am a former data analyst (five years in the Seniors and Disabilities Unit of the Department of Health) for the State of Alaska...and still don't see such a simple change as negatively impacting data quality.
Quote from: þerxh Sant-Enogat on June 09, 2025, 01:55:45 AMNo questions should be mandatory
This is already the case as per Lexh.C.1.2.2.1.
Maybe let's not worry about people getting hypothetically offended on this one, so we can keep the data consistent.
Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 10, 2025, 05:11:16 PMMaybe let's not worry about people getting hypothetically offended on this one, so we can keep the data consistent.
Sure, Baron. We won't worry about people getting offended on this one. :)
Hypothetically offended, yes. If someone is legitimately offended, that will be different, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 10, 2025, 06:54:28 PMHypothetically offended, yes. If someone is legitimately offended, that will be different, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Sure, Baron.
Added questions on age and civil status (as on the previous census) and on education level (seems to make sense for a census).