Introduction Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) was developed as technique for quality assurance in industrial production. The use of LQAS in health sciences is limited to coverage evaluations of different health activities such as immunisation coverage, antenatal care coverage, elimination of neonatal tetanus and coverage iodised salt and others. LQAS has been accepted as rapid epidemiological survey method. The present study was carried out to explore the feasibility of using LQAS in Census Verification.

Methods Comprehensive Rural Health Services Project (CRHSP) located in northern India, caters to a population of 70 000 spread in 28 villages. All the individuals in the project area have been assigned a 10 digit unique identification number. Every year a health census is carried out to update the computerised health management information system by multi-purpose health workers. Quality control measure of such activity amounts cross verification of records of 25% population by the medical officer. The whole process takes 2 months time. LQAS was applied as a quality control measure for census operation. Village was considered as a Lot. 25% individual IDs were selected randomly from each village for quality check of demographic and health records. Allowable error was fixed at 5%. If the error exceeded the limit of 5% the Lot was considered to be rejected and the whole census process was repeated.

Results Four villages were rejected upon using LQAS. The total duration of census operation was similar to previous method.

Conclusion LQAS can be used a scientific and robust method of quality control of census verification.