and where I belong

The period could be up to 20 or so years in the case of a child born (like Bevan) whose parents didn't know their ancestry at the time, but found out by the time of the child's first Maori option (or indeed…

I'm sure you're not the only one, but I suspect there won't be many.

So I really truly don't know that I don't have any Maori ancestry. This may change in the next few months. I can't know if it will.

When I enrolled to vote and filled out my first censuses I would have answered "No" to Maori ancestry and been quite sure…

True, but in the case of Pakeha people are taking offense because they heard and believed a bunch…

Pretty much. There are a lot of words that weren't offensive when first used, but which have taken on such a meaning. A number of words dealing with disability…

It is a little frustrating, but if people take offense at a word, then using the word for them is offensive. There's no way around that, other than letting people label themselves.

It's…

Agreed. It frustrates me that one of the persistant Pakeha myths is that Pakeha is a dirty word. It never was, is not, and will only be if us Pakeha buy into the myth. Me, I'm Pakeha…

or more pertinently, not comfortable with the term Pakeha. Do wish StatsNZ would show some leadership.

The 2010 health sector review by Donna Cormack and her colleague is worth a read.

This census, the religion question will be really interesting in that respect: No Religion/ Not Stated is due to overtake Christian this census or next, but if people put Jedi they go in…

that makes sense ..... but without the question "which roll are you on?" does this really work? (or do the people making the estimate connect up…

Always found that one interesting. If it's about *belonging* to a culture, then different ones of those have membership criteria and pathways that individuals interact with.

There's nothing to stop people making up identifications, but I'm not sure why they would bother in a Census -…

Just a bit surprised at first that the race question would get higher response than the ethnicity one. Seems like evidence against people claiming Maori ethnicity for some kind of gain as talkback would have…

Ethnicity is more self-identified. Someone may know that they have one Māori great-great-grandmother, but consider themselves Pākehā (or Han Chinese, or whatever), not self-identifying as Māori in any way.

The question: 'are you descended from a Māori?', however isn't a question where changing how you…

Really? How does that work?

Is there a main ethnicity question? There's an ethnicity question, but I didn't think there was a question which asked you your main ethnicity.

However, if the answers to the ethnicity question were used, the number…

The Māori electorates represent the proportion of the Māori descent population who are on the Māori roll, including the same proportion of non-enrolled Māori.

If 55% of enrolled…

I’m not too worried about it. It could be seen as minor redress of the situation that pertained when the Maori seats were established: only 4 seats for what was then half the population of the country. If they get an extra seat now……no biggie.…

Yeah, but it would also lose the information contained in the non-boolean answers, which some people might find valuable. I dunno, I guess I…

The nerdy end of the audience thanks you for the interesting information. I've actually just been doing an 8 week data analysis course, getting up to date on a few things I…

No. The figure that is imputed is a census-derived figure. It takes the answer…

Yes, for the good reason that MPs represent everyone, not just those old enough to vote. Also, some populations (such as Maori and Pasifica) have a higher population of young people and this should…

Indeed. Possibly Stats prefer the general ethnicity datasets for all other purposes (it would be interesting to see how they align?)

The census and electoral registration forms are different: the census is yes/no/don't know while the registration form…

Yes, but an accurate number of what? Statistics NZ are charged with using "the total number of ordinarily resident persons of New Zealand Māori descent as determined by the last periodical census", the number they give…

Probably not a great difference usually, although at the margins I imagine it occasionally could. And, of course, nearly half-a-million people…

There are a few ways people can provide an uncategorised answer to the question:
– they genuinely don't know
– they don't understand the question
– they don't want to fill the census out properly

There…

I believe that, for the purpose of drawing boundaries, it is actual individuals (albeit in an anonymised way) who are randomly assigned as either Māori descent, or…

Nah, this is some good research, sir, very interesting, most informative. Going to have to cogitate on this for a bit, but my initial feeling about these questions:

It also raises important…

I think this is the important thing to stress. A certain percentage of you is assigned as Māori based on your other answers.

My understanding is that they look at the answers to the four questions that most strongly correlated with the results…

And they do! Thanks!

I copy pasted from a Word document, and was pleasantly surprised it worked at all.

After seeking and receiving legal advice, the Government Statistician decided that those not answering Yes
or No to the question on Mäori descent in the 1996 Census should be allocated to one of these two categories
for…

For the purposes of the Electoral Act, there's a requirement that the information used is about Māori descent, which means you must have a direct ancestor who is/was (New Zealand) Māori. Statistics…

update
bugger kept reading…not enough people speak Maori to make any difference to the results

I'm presuming a chief statistician decided to separate out the question in the first place and another one decided that wasn't good enough.

Of course, they did try a bunch of other things to see if they were correlated, including income and Labour force status (they just…

low income
speak Maori
christian
low education

then i might get assigned as Maori..

Is this right thing to do? for me it depends on what the other questions they use. The…

Thanks! I've been a little worried that this might be a little nerdy, even for Public Address :-)