INEbase / Demography and Population / Population Figures and Demographic Censuses / Population and Housing Census 2001

Population and Housing Census 2001

Telephone assistance service

A telephone assistance call-centre was set up to assist the Census operation. This centre provided all types of information on the Census and recorded suggestions and incidents. The contact phone number was 900 15 11 20, although users could also contact the service by email at ayuda@censos2001.es. The call-centre was operative from October 15th 2001 to January 31st 2002, although in some provinces assistance services were maintained throughout February from the corresponding Provincial INE Delegation. The service was operative between 9 am and 10 pm. From Monday to Sunday.

Assistance was provided in all the official Spanish languages, as well as in English and French, although the latter were only available in the morning.

During the period when information was collected via the Internet, the service also assisted users who had opted to use this possibility. Operators could unblock dwellings that had been blocked, for whatever reason.

Summary of the traffic

Total number of calls received, broken down in the following table:

The following chart presents the distribution of calls by months:

The curve representing the number of calls received during the days of the week tends to remain stable throughout the whole campaign. It is practically uniform from Monday to Thursday and descends considerably from Fridays through to Sundays.

The distribution by time slots indicates a concentration of calls in the morning with another peak at around 7 pm:

The following chart presents the traffic of calls by languages. The section "Catalan" includes calls received in Valenciano and Mallorquín.

>As regards the sex of the citizens using the service, 55% were female and 45% were male.

The centre received and managed 5,814 emails.

Type of calls

The 365,951 calls received are classified by:

Of all the requests for information, 208,286 can be classified as requests for general information on the Censuses and the census operation. These calls can be classified by topic, as presented in the distribution included in the following graph:

Of the 116,018 requests for information regarding completing the questionnaires on paper, 50,596 requested register information, 16,020 requested information on individual questionnaires, 40,270 on the household questionnaire and 9,132 on the dwelling questionnaire. The questions that required most assistance were: relationship with person number 1 (12,099), situation last week (6,049), year since you have lived in the dwelling (6,071) and availability of a second dwelling (3,616).

As regards the 3,206 requests pursuing information regarding completing the documents via the Internet, 758 were about register information, 514 on the individual questionnaire, 463 on the household questionnaire and 488 on the dwelling questionnaire. The questions that required most assistance were: Were you employed or temporarily absent from your employment last week? (212), year since you have lived in the dwelling (177) and main activity performed by the establishment where you work (174).

Incidents

45,954 calls were dedicated to reporting incidents during the collection process. Of these calls, 41,350 were related to census agents, 1,240 were complaints regarding the content of the Census, 363 regarding the complexity of the questionnaires and 3,001 regarding completing the form via the Internet.