THE TRAINING PROGRAM

Preparation of the Program

A year before the censuses, a five-man Decennial Census Training Techniques Committee was established in the Bureau to prepare a training program and training materials for the enumeration of the 1960 Censuses of Population and Housing. Members were drawn from the five divisions of the Bureau most concerned with the census training--Field, Personnel, Population, Housing, and Statistical Research Divisions.

The first result of the Committee's deliberations was the determination of the areas in which major policy decisions were needed before a program could be prepared. The resulting decisions, which provided a basis for the planning of the training program, were the following:

1. The person responsible for the performance of a group was to have the responsibility for training that group. Thus crew leaders would train enumerators, and Technical Officers would train crew leaders.

2. The training was to be very detailed and was to cover all the on-the-job procedures as well as all definitions of the terms and concepts underlying the classification schemes used for collecting the data.

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Each trainee was to be paid for participating in training.
Expenditures for training were not to exceed $3 million.

Operating within this framework, the Committee next had to arrive at decisions regarding the following essential conditions of the training:

1. The total length of the training session. It was decided to have a 9-hour training session for the first stage of the censuses and an 8-hour training session for the second stage. The decision was based on the budgetary limitation in combination with the large quantity of material to be presented, and the choices were within a narrow range.

2. The number of hours of training per day. The presentation of stage I training in short sessions on successive days was largely determined by the large number of essential items of information to be presented. It was felt that 4 hours of concentrated training was about as much as could be absorbed in one day.

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The method of training. The principle that the crew leader should be responsible for training his enumerators was considered to have as a corollary that the crew leader personally should present significant portions of the materials (thus eliminating from consideration, for example, a training program consisting entirely of filmstrips).

There was general agreement that, as in previous censuses

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A combination of different media--filmstrips, lectures, etc.--would be used. Training materials, including lectures, would be prepared by the Bureau, to reduce the variations in training which could result from several levels of instruction and a large number of instructors.

3. A considerable portion of the training sessions would be spent in practice exercises. 4. Enumerators would not be expected to learn all the details during the training sessions. They were to rely on an enumerator's reference manual to answer their questions on handling special situations.

There were two rather important innovations relative to training methods employed in previous censuses. The first was the "induction of enumerators." By scheduling the training for the 3 days immediately preceding the beginning of the enumeration, it was possible to institute the procedure by which each of the enumerators was to be accompanied to the first few households by either a crew leader or a field reviewer, either on the last day of the training, March 31, or on the first day of the enumeration, April 1.

The second innovation was the preparation of a home-study booklet, "Let's Talk Census," which was given the enumerators as soon as they were appointed, to give them a brief survey of their future responsibilities before they attended their first training class. This was suggested by the staff of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics of Canada, which had discovered that such a booklet stimulated considerable interest in advance and, more important, that many enumerators seemed to learn more readily because of it.

Organization of the Training

Technical training. --The plan adopted for the technical instruction was for a small group of persons to receive the training initially and for them to train a larger group who in turn trained a still larger group who then trained the enumerators.

The first persons to receive the training were called Chief Instructors. These were 39 professional people (15 two-person teams and 9 replacements), most of them members of the staff of the Bureau who had been working on one aspect or another of the census preparations, who were trained in Bureau

headquarters in Washington. They received 5 days of intensive training by specialists in the subject content and procedures of the census and in training techniques.

After the first half-day of training, the Chief Instructors for the single-stage enumeration areas and those for the two-stage enumeration areas met separately for the remainder of the training period.

The Chief Instructors were teamed in pairs, and each pair conducted training sessions in two different locations in the United States. Their job was to explain to the Technical Officers their responsibilities and train them in their technical functions as well as to prepare them to train the crew leaders. The 22 Chief Instructors for the two-stage enumeration areas started February 22 on the first assignments and February 29 on the second. The 8 Chief Instructors for the single-stage enumeration areas began the first assignments on February 29; only 6 Chief Instructors, or 3 teams, were required for the second assignments beginning March 7. They gave 5 days of training to the 405 Technical Officers from the District Offices and 68 Program Technicians from the 17 Regional Offices. (The Program Technicians were to be stand-by reserves for the Technical Officers during the enumeration.) The 399 District Supervisors and their assistants, administrative clerks, and other office personnel attended the training sessions as their jobs permitted.

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At the completion of the training, the trainees were given a "Test for Technical Officers.' test papers were sent to Washington with forms designated as "Chief Instructor's Report of Technical Officers' Training" which contained the name of each trainee, his District Office, and the Chief Instructor's rating as average, above average, or unsatisfactory, with notes of explanation. Thirtythree trainees were considered unsatisfactory and were replaced. Replacements were trained in Washington, D.C., and in St. Louis, Mo.

Crew leaders for single-stage enumeration areas received 4 days of technical training from the Technical Officers, beginning March 14 or March 21. Crew leaders for two-stage enumeration areas received 3 days of technical training beginning March 16 or March 22, and those selected for stage II enumeration received 2 additional days of training beginning April 8, 14, or 21, along with the field reviewers that were to be used in the stage II enumeration.

The Technical Officers also trained transcription verification supervisors and quality control supervisors for the District Offices.

The enumerators received their administrative and technical training from the crew leaders in 5,604 training centers. Almost all training centers were utilized in the forenoon for one training group and in the afternoon for another. Enumerators for single-stage enumeration areas received 4 hours of training each day for 4 consecutive days beginning March 28. Enumerators for two-stage enumeration areas received 4 hours of training on each of 3 consecutive days beginning March 28, and 41,900 who were later selected for the stage II enumeration received 8 additional hours of training on April 18 and 19 or April 25 and 26.

Enumerators selected for the enumeration of transients in hotels, motels, etc. on the evening of March 31 ("T-night") received an hour or more of special training from their crew leaders earlier that same day. Those selected for the enumeration of missions, flophouses, etc. on April 20 or April 26 ("M-night" in their respective districts) received their instruction on April 18 and 19 or April 25 and 26 during the training sessions for the stage II enumeration. Few T-night or M-night areas were located in single-stage enumeration areas.

On March 31, the last day of the training of enumerators for stage I and for single-stage enumeration, about 50 percent of the enumerators enumerated three to five households each as a part of the training program. A "Household Change Report" was left with each household enumerated, with the request that the schedule be completed and dropped in the mail if any change occurred during the remainder of the day, i.e., before April 1.

The crew leader selected as his field reviewer the enumerator whom he thought best qualified at the close of the training sessions. The field reviewer received additional training in editing the listing books and enumeration books for completeness of coverage and quality of responses, in checking the sample selection, and in closeout procedures when no respondent could be found at home after repeated visits to a household. He also received instructions for examining the work records and expense records of the enumerators.

A total of 167,827 persons completed the enumerator training in March, 133,805 for two-stage areas and 34,022 for single-stage areas. Most of them became enumerators and some became field reviewers. A number dropped out after completion of the training and 5,751 persons were trained as replacements.

The diagram below shows the main outlines of the organization of the technical training.

Administrative training.--The administrative personnel of the District Offices were trained in the Regional Offices by Regional Office personnel. The District Supervisors, Assistant Supervisors, and administrative clerks all received 4 days of training beginning on the day they entered on duty in their respective positions. The District Supervisors entered on duty January 11 or 18, the Assistant Supervisors January 18, and the administrative clerks January 18 or 25.

The remainder of the District Office personnel received their administrative training from their supervisors in the offices. These included the 405 Technical Officers who entered on duty February 1 and received their administrative training from their respective District Supervisors. The Technical Officers then assisted in organizing the offices and recruiting crew leaders. The crew leaders received training from the District Supervisors or Assistant Supervisors on such administrative duties as recruiting enumerators, obtaining space for enumerator training, reporting progress, etc.

Training calendar. --The complete schedule for the training of District Office personnel for both administrative and technical functions is given below.

The two most basic training materials were the Enumerator's Reference Manual, which was intended for use both during the training and during the enumeration, and the Crew Leader's Guide for Training Enumerators. Much of the time of the Training Committee was devoted to the preparation of these two documents, and they were tested extensively during the census pretests and reviewed and revised after each pretest.

To the extent possible, the Enumerator's Reference Manual contained all the detailed information necessary to handle all the situations that might arise during the enumeration--explanations of concepts and procedures and definitions. As the note on the inside cover said, an enumerator was not expected to remember all the details in the manual but was expected to learn to use it whenever he had a census problem.

The Crew Leader's Guide for Training Enumerators contained the lectures which the crew leaders read verbatim during the enumerator training. It also contained suggestions for questioning the class at specific points in the exposition, and for having members of the class conduct mock interviews, and for showing filmstrips. It included a section of explanations for the instructor on the time schedule of the training, trainer-trainee relations, how to use the film projector and record player, how to conduct practice interviews, how to get the training room ready, and similar items of information and instruction.

An innovation was the Training Workbook, a 17" x 14" spiral-bound sheaf of practice exercises and examples of forms. There was also a Practice Exercise Booklet consisting of several partly-filled census schedules, stapled together in the form of a booklet, for practice enumeration and for use in mock interviews.

For training the crew leaders, the same materials were used with the addition of a Technical Officer's Guide for Training Crew Leaders which contained material specifically on the duties of crew leaders during the enumeration, and a Crew Leader's Manual. There was also a District Supervisor's and Technical Officer's Guide for Preparatory Training which covered subjects on which the crew leaders had to be trained well ahead of the enumeration, e.g., how to recruit, select, and test enumerators, how to check ED's before enumeration, public relations functions, etc.

The Crew Leader's Manual gave explicit instructions on what the crew leader was to do before, during, and after the enumeration. The manual featured a crew leader activity calendar on the inside front cover. The appendixes contained exhibits of forms and also included instructions for enumeration of general hospitals and other institutions, a crew leader's checklist for map review and preparatory work, and agreements with Federal agencies for the enumeration of special areas.

For the training of the Technical Officers there was a Chief Instructor's Guide for Training Technical Officers. As stated in the introduction, "there is only one major subject presented to the Technical Officer which he, in turn, does not pass on to the Crew leader." The subject was quality control. This Guide was a slim pamphlet which served, for the most part, simply as a launching pad for the other materials.

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Condition of a Housing Unit (illustration of housing units which were "sound," "deteriorating," and "dilapidated," and their distinguishing features)

The Ground You Cover (shown to enumerators only in cities for which data were to be published by city block, to illustrate coverage procedures)

The Ground You Cover (shown everywhere except in cities for which data were to be published by city block)

Enumerators at Work (shown in two-stage enumeration areas)