Questionnaire Text

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5. Age
Age in completed years

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Column 5: Age

84. The age of every person must be stated in completed years only, as on March 3, 2008. For those who know their birthdays, the age to be recorded is the age at last birthday. "Age in completed years only" means that all the ages must be recorded in full years, discarding fractions of years and months.


84.1 For instance, 15 years 11 months should be written down as 15. Do not write down months. Only years are required. The age of all infants who are less than one year old should be recorded as "00". In this case, you are requested to make sure that infants of the household, even if they are one day or
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less than one day old on Census Night, are invariably enumerated. It is again pointed out that you should take all precautions to enumerate children (less than age 14) and infants (less than 1 year). Unless you ask probing questions they are likely to be omitted. This is a very important instruction that you should always bear in mind. Most of the households have the Household Book. The date of birth of each person enumerated may be obtained from it. However, the date of birth has to be confirmed by the respondent before using it to calculate his/her age.

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

For such a person use any of the following methods to estimate his/her age:

(1) You may ask him/her to state the year of birth according to the animal calendar. Based on the information furnished and using the conversion table given to you, record the age in completed years.


(2)

(i) Ask him/her to name any historical event (preferably a local one) which he/she has been told as having occurred around the time of his/her birth. You may be given a list of historical events for this purpose and you may suggest a suitable event from this list also.
(ii) Ask him/her to give you an indication of how old he/she was when that historical event occurred.
(iii) Then use this information to work out his/her age. For example, if a respondent tells you that he/she was about 20 years old when Cambodia attained Independence, his or her age may be about 20 + 54 (November 9, 1953 to March 3, 2008) = 74 years.


(3) Sometimes the age can be ascertained with reference to the age of another person of a known age, who may be living in the same household or in the neighboring household or that of a well-known person of the village such as the village chief.

(4) Only as a last resort you should estimate a person's age from his/her physical features. 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 to the person who is absent. You should not leave this column blank under any circumstances.