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Kingdom, and in the British Empire generally, has been to ask as few particulars as possible and to concentrate all efforts on getting these with the greatest attain- able accuracy.
The main heads of information required from a census have been as follows :-
(1) Area of the territory under review and of each of its principal local
subdivisions.
(2) Number of houses
(i) inhabited
(ii) uninhabited
(iii) building.
Information as regards (1) and (2) is obtained while the preliminaries to the Census are being carried out and from other sources.
(3) Population, distinguishing Male and Female, and also the Military and
Shipping Population.
(4) Population of the Chief Towns or Administrative Areas.
(5) Ages of Males and Females by individual years or in quinquennial
groups.
(6) Condition as to Marriage in combination with ages.
(7) Occupations.
(8) Birthplaces (distinguishing the country of birth and whether British
subjects, naturalised British subjects or Foreign subjects).
(9) Religions.
(10) Degree of elementary education.
(11) Infirmities, distinguishing Blind, Deaf, Dumb, and Mentally Deranged.
In these categories from (3) onwards, the information required must be obtained by enquiry from the inhabitants. It becomes necessary, therefore, to prepare a questionnaire, schedule or Census Form. The Form used in 1931 is attached to the Census Order and appears in Appendix A.
The first two columns, Name and Relationship to Head of Household, are only for purposes of checking and are ignored whenever the compilation of the statistics
commences.
A
Population falls into natural groups according to Sex and Age and particulars of these must, therefore, be obtained. The distribution of the population, accord- ing to Conjugal Condition, does not depend on natural causes but on the social institution of marriage, and this institution is so well established that this classi- fication is comparable in importance to classification according to sex and age. question is asked, therefore, whether the person enumerated is single, married, widowed or divorced. Questions regarding the duration and fertility of marriages were not included. Such information is of great interest in the case of a settled community, but it was felt that to include such questions would overload the schedule. On similar grounds an enquiry on orphanhood was omitted.
Birthplace, Race and Nationality were all included in the Form used on this occasion. In 1921 questions were asked on Birthplace and Nationality only, and in 1911 on Birthplace and Race only. The reports were divided, however, on both occasions, into two main sections of Chinese and non-Chinese and it would appear that this division was by race and not by possible nationality. But in 1921 the cosmopolitan non-Chinese population could only be classified according to nationality with the result that Javanese, Malays, Annamites and others were included with Europeans from their respective countries. Race is of much more importance in some respects than nationality and it was decided, therefore, on this occasion to include the three questions.
A new item of enquiry was made on this occasion, namely, Length of Residence in the Colony. It was argued against this addition that a person, who first came to Hong Kong twenty years ago and has spent most of the intervening years elsewhere,