Statistics SA is adding e-mail as a communication option in the upcoming Commercial Agriculture Census, set to begin in August.
The Commercial Agriculture census will assist Stats SA in determining food security, measure the productive use of land and calculate gross domestic product.
It will include about 60 000 farms in the formal agricultural business sector, says Agricultural Statistics manager Moses Mnyaka.
This will be the first time the organisation uses e-mail and sends out electronic questionnaires in a survey, says Stats SA marketing manager Nireen Naidoo.
The move is also part of a drive by Stats SA to determine the feasibility of adding an online option to the 2011 national census, she says.
In February, Stats SA also used cellphones to co-ordinate the activities of its field workers in the Community Survey 2007, Naidoo says. Field workers were able to report on their activities by SMS, and Stats SA could also provide them with reports as to which areas/households had already been covered.
Nashua Mobile, which provided the mobile solution, says Stats SA dispensed prepaid cellular airtime worth R1.2 million to 5 600 census officers during that period.
"The objective is to build up to using the Internet as one of the tools for the next population census in 2011," Naidoo says.
Expanding reach
Mnyaka says the census will be done in the form of a questionnaire sent to all farms registered for value-added tax and income tax. Questionnaires will be sent out on 1 August 2007, and must be returned on 31 May 2008 at the latest, he says.
Naidoo says many farmers will have their book keepers fill in the questionnaire. The use of electronic questionnaires will enable the farmers to forward the copies easily. "Hard copies tend to get lost."
She adds that e-mails also allow Stats SA to reach farmers that were previously inaccessible.
"We've had problems where field workers were unable to reach farmers because of distances, or a guard dog. People also don't want to arrive at home after work and have to face a field worker. This will give farmers the opportunity to take part in the census without having to see a field worker," she says.
"Through the mobile phone solution, we could send an SMS to a field worker informing them not to go to a specific area/home because they have already responded to the survey."
Earlier this year, Stats SA ran a poll to determine the possibility of adding of an online channel to the 2011 census.
The response to the idea of an online option was positive, with 97% of the 1 194 respondents to the online questionnaire saying they are willing to complete the census online, says Naidoo.
Stats SA also received 425 responses through its national workshops, and 90% of those respondents said they would use the online option.
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