Then, based on history, just take boxes of pre-numbered forms and send them out to all the locations where the forms might be needed (with a bunch of other stuff on there already typed in by cheap to hire GS2 clerks and avoid the higher expense of GS5/6/7 registered nurses).
The forms would be used as births took place, and every other form would be even or odd ~ and that's the only requirement for the number ~ that it exist.
The article you point to assumes that the bureaucrats could not figure out how to meet the sample selection criteria unless they numbered the documents after they received them.
Gaack!!!!
Forty years in the statistics racket and this is the thanks I get ~ that forms can only be numbered AFTER they are used.
Hey, that's a specious argument anyway. If you only sample Evens and Not Odds, all you need is a 1 and a 2. Half with 1 and half with 2.
No doubt the situation caused consternation in some quarters ~ but babies gotta' get born no matter what the bureaucrats do. So what you do is view this document as kind of floating around in the air as the baby-momma goes through what she goes through and think of what somebody "there" would want to do with it, and when. That's the LOWEST ENERGY COST ROUTE and odds are real good that's the way it worked. A good form designer makes sure his design matches the normal flow of work. In this case that flow is directed primarily by the needs of the uterus and the baby. I think most people have that cycle down pat and can adapt to it.
An ol'gal named Marie Eldridge worked in the predecessor to HHS (HEW at the time) and worked up forms and statistical sampling schemes for this sort of thing. She came into USPS about 1968 while I was in the service. If she's still around we could find her and ask some questions ~ bet she had a hand in this and believe me she was too cantankerous and smart to have set up a system that required punching in the document number AFTER use.
The CDC’s 1961 Natality Report uses 50% sampling and justifies it because the BC’s were numbered at the state DOH offices as they were received there.
That matches what Janice Okubo, Communications Director for the Hawaii DOH, says.
And the numbers for the BC’s late in the year, compared to the number of births reported to the CDC, leave precious little wiggle room for there to be blocks of numbers that never got used.
Substantiate your claim that they did it some other way than how the CDC, the HDOH Communications Director, and the actual data all say they did it.