About the Census of Agriculture >

Data processing

Data capture
Edit and imputation
Data validation

Data capture

The Census of Agriculture and Census of Population questionnaires went their separate ways once the census field collection units (FCUs) had finished their quality checks. The FCUs separated the agriculture questionnaires from the population questionnaires and sent them to the Census of Agriculture processing staff in Ottawa where they were sorted, batched, and given a bar code label to register them into a control file. Next they were electronically scanned and the data automatically captured from the image using intelligent character recognition (ICR) software, a technology that reads data from the images. Any responses not recognized by the ICR process were sent to an operator who viewed the questionnaire image and entered the correct data into the system.

Edit and imputation

Once the data have been captured, they are loaded to an automated processing system that takes them through a detailed edit and imputation process and allows processing staff to refer to a questionnaire image with the click of a mouse. The data are first subjected to many rigorous quality control and processing edits to identify and resolve problems related to inaccurate, missing or inconsistent data. Those situations that cannot be resolved by the edit process are subsequently handled by an imputation procedure that replaces each missing or inconsistent response either with a value consistent with the other data on the questionnaire or with a response obtained from a similar agricultural operation.

Data validation

Data validation follows the edit and imputation processes. At this stage, subject-matter analysts review the aggregate data at various geographic levels and examine the individual values, both large and small, reported for each variable. The data are compared with previous census results, current agricultural surveys and administrative sources. Errors remaining due to coverage, misreporting, data capture or other reasons are identified and corrected. Where necessary, respondents are contacted to verify their responses. Near the end of the validation process, certification reports, containing results of the analysis and recommendations for publication, are prepared and presented to a review committee.