[Questions P00-P20 were asked for persons in both the household and non-household populations.]

[Questions P00 to P03 were asked for all persons in the household (usual members or visitors) who were present on census night (per the roster in A16a).]

P02. Age.
How old is [respondent], in completed years? _ _

5. Age on 26th September, 2010 (Census Night) - The age of every person must be stated in completed years only and in two digits. For those who know their birthdays the age to record is the age as at last birthday with reference to the Census Night. "Age in completed years only" means that all the ages must be recorded in full years discarding fractions of years and months. For instance, 15 years 11 months must be written down as 15. Do not write down months. Only years are required. All infants who are less than one year old must be recorded as "00" year old. Ages of persons who are 99 years or more should be recorded as 99.

What to do when a person does not know his/her age:

(i) For such a person, use the following method to estimate his/her age:

• Ask him/her to name any historical event preferably a local one (as in appendix 1), which occurred around the time of his/her birth.
• Ask him/her to give you an indication of how old he/she was when that event occurred or how many years elapsed before his/her birth.
• Then use this information to work out his/her age. For example, if a respondent tells you that he/she was about 15 years when Ghana attained her independence this person must be 15 + 53 (i.e. 6th March 1957 to 26th September, 2010) = 68 years.

(ii) If this method fails, you must try the following approach:

• Simply estimate how old he/she may be.
• Then select from your list of local, regional or national historical events some events which occurred about the time when according to your estimate, he/she must have been born.
• Ask whether he/she has heard about any of these events.
• If he/she has, ask him/her to give you an indication of how old he/she was when this event occurred or how many years elapsed before he/she was born.
• Then from this information work out his/her age.

(iii) If this second approach also does not elicit the required information, then base your estimate on biological relationships. For instance, a woman who does not know her age but who has two or three children of her own is unlikely to be less than 15 years old however small she may look. You may then try to work out her age by the following method:-

• Ask her, at what age she had her first child.
• Determine the age of her oldest child.
• Then add her age at first child to the age of her first child to obtain her age. You must not base your assumption on the oldest living child without further probing. There is the likelihood that (in certain cases) the first child died or that the woman had miscarriages or stillborn children before the oldest living child was born. Therefore, if the woman tells you that she had one miscarriage or stillbirth before the oldest living child was born, you must make your estimation from the year of the first miscarriage, still-birth or live birth.
• Note also that some women do not have children early in life while others have children earlier than what generally obtains in the community. Therefore, in every case you must find out whether she had her first child, miscarriage or stillbirth at the usual age before you assume she was aged 18 years at her first pregnancy.
• Then use the information obtained by the above means to estimate her age.

(iv) Only as a last resort should you estimate a person's age from physical features.

(v) If you are obtaining information about an absent person from a third person, then obviously you have to rely on the information supplied by the third person in estimating the age in respect of the person who is absent. Under no circumstance must you leave the age column blank.