The Census Review Act

[Sir Lüc]

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

[Sir Lüc]

(This set of questions is almost entirely lifted from discussions that took place around the time of the past Census.)

[þerxh Sant-Enogat]

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 ?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I'm not a fan of the French Republic's official blindness to ethnicity (though I understand the historical reasons for it), 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

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

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.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

• 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.

[/list]

• Place of residence, with a suggestion respondents reply down to the precision required by provincial catchment legislation.

[/list]

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.

[þerxh Sant-Enogat]

No questions should be mandatory
Age is missing, as well as spoken languages, education level, presence on which social media, hobbies

[King Txec]

One 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

[King Txec]

Some questions should be mandatory. At the very least, each option might simply include "decline to state".

-Txec R

[Munditenens Tresplet]

One 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?

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

One 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.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

One 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.

[King Txec]

One 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

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

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.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

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.