Design

The 2023 Census online questions for iwi affiliation and Māori descent were designed in partnership with Te Kāhui Raraunga (TKR) under our Mana Ōrite Relationship agreement with Stats NZ.  

 

Redesign of the iwi affiliation question online has contributed to better quality data for iwi.  

 

Iwi affiliation question changes include: 

• Increasing the number of iwi possible to select, from 5 to 16, and improving format to make it easy to add iwi. This supported people to identify more of their whakapapa. 

• Addition of a map for people to select a region, then their iwi affiliation, or affiliations, from a list of iwi in that region. This improved people’s ability to identify their iwi.  

• Ability to bypass the map and select iwi from a list that could be filtered by region. This improved the quality of the data during processing. 

• Upgrading the iwi affiliation variable to priority 1 from priority 2. This allowed more resources and expertise to be allocated to the variable across its lifecycle, i.e. from question design to release of the data. This contributed to better quality data for iwi. 

 

In addition, as part of our role on the 2023 Census Programme Board, we advocated for iwi affiliation data to be released earlier than previous Censuses, giving iwi more timely access to their data. 

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Data collection

2023 Census has been designed using a combined model. This means the data collected through census responses (completed individual and dwelling census forms) was combined with data from alternative data sources when there was no census form response.  

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Alternative data sources include administrative (admin) data and data from previous censuses. Admin data is the information collected by government agencies or other organisations, e.g. birth, death and tax records. 

 

You can read more about the combined model on the Stats NZ website.  

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Understanding data insights for your iwi 

You can view insights for your iwi on Te Whata from Thursday 26 September 2024. 

 

Iwi Information Managers and iwi members with read only access to their private iwi page can download the data tables from Te Whata for free from Thursday 26 September 2024. 

 

On your iwi page, you can view your iwi affiliation population, as well as where people in your iwi live within Aotearoa to at least a regional level. Please note, people who affiliate to your iwi, may also affiliate to other iwi across the motu.  

 

The increased percentage for your iwi is in comparison to 2013 Census data. This can be attributed to a few factors. Alongside population growth and immigration, improvements to the questionnaire design and data collection methods have contributed to these increases. 

 

Depending on the size of your iwi, you may see some topics and variables in relation to individuals and dwellings data by iwi affiliation and Māori descent. This could include insights on languages spoken, home ownership or qualifications.  

 

The more 2023 Census responses collected from people in your iwi, the more data is available to analyse. This is used to identify patterns and relationships within the data. These will then be shared on Te Whata as insights for your iwi.  

 

If you are an Iwi Information Manager and not yet set up on Te Whata, email tewhata@kahuiraraunga.io to get set up. Read more about Iwi Data and Iwi Information Managers on Te Whata.