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Wherever you are in the country on March 7 you are required to fill out a census form and for the first time ever this year you will be allowed to call yourself a New Zealander.
In the last census nearly 100,000 people ignored the official boxes and wrote New Zealander (78,000); Kiwi (8,900); Pakeha (8,100); White (806) or Native (203). All of them were tallied up by Statistics New Zealand as New Zealand European.
New Zealander is a nationality but it has never before been recognised by Statistics New Zealand as an ethnicity. There's still no tick-box labelled New Zealander and those who want to be ethnic New Zealanders have to write it in the "other" box.
Nationality defines where you're born while ethnicity includes factors such as a person's citizenship, language, religion or culture. Because it's self-defined there's no right or wrong answer.
Census general manager Nancy McBeth says there are a number of people who like to identify their ethnicity as New Zealander or Kiwi who aren't from a European background.
Official opinion is divided over whether ethnicity should even be measured at all.
"In some countries they don't collect ethnicity data. France and Germany is an example and the OECD is actually banned from using ethnicity data," says Paul Callister from the Institute of Policy Studies.
But Human Rights Commissioner Joris de Bres it's important in terms of the census that that information is available for social policy.
"We need to know the demographic make-up if you like of the population...the ethnic composition because we need to be sure that people of different ethnicities are receiving equal treatment," says de Bres.
Statistics New Zealand has launched a major publicity campaign targeting minority groups in a bid to get everyone to take part in the five-yearly statistical stocktake. It says it's getting increasingly harder to get people to fill in the forms, especially young people and Maori and Pacific Island men.
McBeth says this year online surveys are being used, as well as targeted education campaigns. She says the census is how the government gets an accurate snapshot of who New Zealanders are.
