Literal question
[Questions on persons]
[Ask to] residents (list all persons usually residing in the household, whether present or absent) and visitors (list all persons who do not usually reside in the household, but who spent the night preceding the interview in the household.
The whole population
[Questions 1-14 were asked of all persons.]
P7. Age _ _
Put the declared or estimated age in full years (as of last birthday)
Interviewer instructions
c) Filling in pages 2 and 3
1. Columns P1 to P14: The whole population
These columns are to be filled in for all the members of the household: residents and visitors.
Ask the head of the household or the person who answers your questions to give you the names of all present and absent residents (for less than six months) of the household. Classify them under column P2 in the following order:
- Head of household,
- Unmarried children of the head of the household whose mother does not live in the household
- Spouse of the head of the household followed by his or her unmarried children beginning with the oldest.
Where the head of the household is a polygamist, each of his wives must be followed by her unmarried children beginning with the oldest, if they are members of the household.
- Married children of the head of the household or of his wife (wives) followed by their spouses.
- Relatives of the head of me household or of his spouse(s): ascendants (father, mother, grandparents), descendants (grandchildren, great grandchildren) whose parents are not members of the household; collaterals (brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, cousins)
- Persons not related to the head of the household or to his spouse(s): friends, lodgers, house servants, employees who are members of the household
All these persons who are related or not to the head of the household will be followed if necessary by their spouse (s) and children if the latter are members of the household
If after such classification, the head of the household realizes that he has forgotten a resident member of the household, write down his name after the other resident members.
Once all the residents of the household have been listed, ask if there are visitors in the household. If so, also classify them as in the previous case.
After this inventory of the members, first fill in columns P1 to P5 for all the members and, as from column P6 fill in, line by line, the individual questions for each of them.
Column P7: Age
Fill in this column only for persons who do not know their date of birth, that is those for whom you put a dash in column P6. Write their age in complete years (age at the last birthday).
Example:
39 for a person aged 39 1/2 years
00 for a child of 7 months
26 for a person aged 26 1/2 years.
If a person does not know his age; do your best to estimate it based on the age of his parents, children or information given by the person himself or other persons. You can also base your estimate on historic events.
Example:
- a person tells you he was born two years before Cameroon became independent:
Calculate his age as follows:
probable year of birth : 1960 - 2 = 1958
probable age: 1986 - 1958 = 28
To calculate the probable age, subtract the year of birth from 1986 and not 1987. This is because since the census will be conducted early 1987, most persons would not yet have celebrated their birthday in 1987.