The panel offers four recommendations concerning coverage measurement plans for 2010. They are as follows:

Recommendation 1: The Census Bureau should evaluate, for use in the 2010 Census Coverage Measurement Program, a broader range of models, most importantly logistic regression models, for net coverage error that include variables in addition to those used to define the A.C.E. poststratification. These should include a wider range of predictors (e.g., geographic, contextual, family and housing variables and census operational variables), alternative model forms (e.g., classification trees), and the use of random effects to model small-area variation.

Recommendation 2: The Census Bureau should choose one or more of the proposed uses of administrative records (e.g., tax record data or state unemployment compensation data) for coverage improvement, nonresponse follow-up, or coverage measurement and comprehensively test those applications during the 2008 census dress rehearsal. If a process using administrative records improves on processes used in 2000, that process should be implemented in the 2010 census.

Recommendation 3: The Census Bureau should collect data in the 2010 census to support development of a database that links person, household, and housing unit characteristics, census processes, and the presence or absence of census component coverage error. This database should also represent coverage errors, including erroneous enumerations, enumerations in the wrong place, duplications, and omissions. The use of this database would better identify the sources of high rates of census component coverage error.

Recommendation 4: Given the number of important research activities currently under way, the needed design of the coverage measurement programs in the dress rehearsal and in the 2010 census, and the additional research suggested by the panel, the Census Bureau should provide the coverage measurement group with sufficient resources to carry out its current research program, its planning activities regarding the dress rehearsal and the 2010 census, and the activities listed in this report.