Sampling microfilmed manuscript census returns - ARCHIVED

In the first part of the paper a review of the historical literature concerning microfilmed manuscript census records is given. Several types of sampling designs have been used ranging in complexity from cluster and stratified random sampling to stratified two-stage cluster sampling. In the second part, a method is given to create a public use sample tape of the 1881 Census of Canada. This work was part of a pilot project for Public Archives of Canada and was carried out by the Social Science Computing Laboratory of the University of Western Ontario. The pilot project was designed to determine the merit and technical and economic feasibility of developing machine readable products from microfilm copies of the 1881 Census of Canada.