EDITING A LARGE-SCALE DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY–THE EXPERIENCE OF THE MELBOURNE FAMILY SURVEY1

This paper discusses the editing procedures for a survey on family formation conducted in Melbourne during 1971. Examples are given of the incidence and types of inconsistencies revealed during the editing stage in the mainly quantitative variables concerning childbearing, numbers of children, and the demographic characteristics of the children. The principal point emphasized is the need for automatic detection and manual correction of coding deficiencies in a survey of this type, i.e. an intensive, “once-off” survey, with a sample size of a few thousand, from which detailed and complex analyses are planned.