... is argued that including questions on ethnicity and religion will increase the detail and perhaps the accuracy of the census. However this is to over look the opinions of many individuals within society for whom the inclusion of such questions results in the exact opposite effect. Peter Skeny (2000) argues it is possible that without these questions the census will have higher levels of cooperation in both the honesty and quantity of replies. It is one notion that if a person is offended by the question they will not reply or if perhaps a person of an ethnic minority feels threatened within their environment they my lie about religion in an effort to go unnoticed. Both of which will damage the reliability of the census, making it less useful. There are numerous reasons for the suspicion of the national census surrounding the questions of race and religion. Most of these ...

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