Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses Rev. 2

The first set of principles and recommendations for population and housing censuses was issued in 1958 at the request of the Statistical Commission of the United Nations in response to a need for developing international standards and as a cornerstone of the first World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses.

As part of the revision process, the United Nations Statistics Division organized three meetings of the Expert Group and on the basis of discussions and deliberations in these meetings the draft Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 2 was finalized for submission to the Statistical Commission of the United Nations. Revision 2 of the Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing
Censuses introduces several substantive changes. For example, it contains an introduction that emphasizes the importance of a census. The recommendations for the 2010 round of censuses are also more output oriented and introduce a set of recommended tabulations on population and housing characteristics that all national statistical/census authorities are requested to generate at least once during the 2010 census round.
The recommendations also stress the importance and necessity of collecting and presenting metadata as an indispensable element in the accurate interpretation of census results.