Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T17:29:32.310Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Estimates and Correlates of Enumeration Completeness: Censuses and Maps in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Caren A. Ginsberg*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602

Extract

Data quality is a central analytical issue in most studies of historical populations. There is often a need for data correction as well as for a careful consideration of the sources and types of error in data collection. Cross-identification of enumerated or registered events in independent sources often can be used as a check on data quality. This study investigates data quality of two sources by their enumeration comparability and in addition discusses some of the problems with such a comparison. The two sources compared are household listings of the United States manuscript federal censuses and independently prepared maps detailing property owners and the location of their property. The method employed estimates the correspondence of listings in each source based on the other and the combined enumeration correspondence of both sources. Further, this paper examines some of the village-level demographic and economic factors which may be associated with differences in the relative completeness of these sources.

Type
Research Note
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1988 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beers, F. W. (1871) Atlas of Franklin County, Massachusetts. New York: Beers and Co.Google Scholar
Chandra Sekar, C. and Deming, W. E. (1949) “On a Method of Estimating Birth and Death Rates and the Extent of Registration.Journal of the American Statistical Association 44: 101115.Google Scholar
Condran, G. A. and Crimmins, E. (1980) “Mortality Differentials Between Rural and Urban Areas of States in Northeastern United States 1890-1900.Journal of Historical Geography 6: 179202.Google Scholar
Conzen, M. P. (1969) “Spatial Data from the 19th Century Manuscript Censuses: A Technique for Rural Settlement and Land Use.Professional Geographer 21 (5): 337343.Google Scholar
Conzen, M. P. (1984) “The County Land Ownership Map in America. Its Commercial Development and Social Transformation 1814-1939.Imago Mundi 36: 931.Google Scholar
Crimmins, E. M. (1980) “The Completeness of 1900 Mortality Data Collected by Registration and Enumeration for Rural and Urban Parts of States: Estimates Using the Chandra Sekar-Deming Technique.” Historical Methods 13 (3): 163170.Google Scholar
Davenport, P. D. (1985) “Duration of Residence in the 1855 Census of New York State.” Historical Methods 18 (1): 512.Google Scholar
Easterlin, R. A., Alter, G., and Condran, G. (1978) “Farms and Farm Families in Old and New Areas: The Northern States in 1860,” in Hareven, Tamara K. and Vinovskis, Maris A. (eds.) Family and Population in Nineteenth Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2284.Google Scholar
Eblen, J. E. (1965) “An Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Frontier Populations.” Demography 2: 399413.Google Scholar
Furstenberg, F. F. Jr., Strong, D., and Crawford, A. G. (1979) “What Happened when the Census was Redone: An Analysis of the Recount of 1870 in Philadelphia.Sociology and Social Research 63 (3): 475505.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, C. A. and Swedlund, A. C. (1986) “Sex-Specific Mortality and Economic Opportunities: Massachusetts, 1860-1899.Continuity and Change 1 (3): 415445.Google Scholar
Meindl, R. S. (1980) “Family Formation and Health in Nineteenth Century Franklin County, Massachusetts,” in Dyke, Bennett and Morrill, Warren T. (eds.) Genealogical Demography. New York: Academic Press: 235250.Google Scholar
Parkerson, D. H. (1982) “How Mobile were Nineteenth Century Americans?Historical Methods 15 (3): 99109.Google Scholar
Seltzer, W. (1969) “Some Results from Asian Population Growth Studies.” Population Studies 23 (3): 395406.Google Scholar
Seltzer, W. and Adlakha, A. (1974) “On the Effect of Errors in the Application of Chandra Sekar-Deming Technique.The Carolina Population Center, Laboratories for Population Statistics Reprint Series No. 14. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina.Google Scholar
Swedlund, A. C., Meindl, R. S., and Gradie, M. I. (1980) “Family Reconstitution in the Connecticut Valley: Progress on Record Linkage and the Mortality Survey,” in Dyke, Bennett and Morrill, Warren T. (eds.) Genealogical Demography. New York: Academic Press: 139155.Google Scholar
Temkin-Greener, H. and Swedlund, A. C. (1983) “A Test of the Child Replacement Hypothesis: Nineteenth Century Massachusetts.Social Biology 30 (2): 218227.Google Scholar