The 2000 Census Interim Assessment (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix A: Census Operations
Appendix A: Census Operations
Pages 155-178
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From page 155... ...
(includinglocal review end internal checks for duplicate addresses) ; · questionnaire delivery and mail return (including redesign of mailings and materials and multiple response modes)
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From page 156... ...
The Postal Service conducted an intensive check of the DSF in early 2000, and updates were made to the MAF based on that check prior to questionnaire delivery. Outside the "Blue Lirze" To develop the MAF for non-city-style areas, the Bureau first conducted a block canvass operation, called address listing, in July 1998-February 1999.
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From page 157... ...
7. Provide opportunity for localities to supply addresses for newly constructed housing units in January-March 2000 to be enumerated in summer 2000 (New Construction LUCA)
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From page 158... ...
Office of Management and Budget when localities disagreed with the Bureau's decision to reject local changes to the MAF Due to time constraints, some planned LUCA operations were combined and rescheduled (LUCA Working Group, 2001:Fig.1-11. In response to local concerns, a New Construction LUCA Program was added to give localities inside the blue line an opportunity during~anuary-March2000 to identify newly constructed housing units.
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From page 159... ...
The final number of addresses on the MAF of occupied and vacant housing units counted in 2000 was 115.9 million (Farber, 2001a:Tables 1, 21. Internal Checks for Duplicates The Census Bureau anticipated that multiple sources to develop the MAF could result in duplication of addresses by carrying out a planned internal consistency check in April in order to reduce the nonresponse follow-up workload.
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From page 160... ...
. At the conclusion of the operation, 1.4 million housing units and 3.6 million people were permanently deleted from the census file, from a total of 2.4 million housing units and 6.0 million people that had been initially flagged as potential duplicates (Miskura, 2000b)
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From page 161... ...
In areas with non-city-style addresses, the development of the 1990 address list was similar to 2000, in that census field staff conducted a prelisting operation in fall 1989. Census enumerators also checked the list in March 1990 when they delivered questionnaires in the areas in which the update/leave technique (new for the 1990 census)
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From page 162... ...
Update/leave In areas outside the blue line in which there were many rural route and post office box addresses that could not be tied to a specific location, census enumerators dropped off address-labeled questionnaires to housing units in their assignment areas. At the same time, they checked the address list and updated it to include new units not on the list, noting for each its location on a map (map spot)
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From page 163... ...
was slightly lower than the rate in 1990 (74%~. This rate is a more refined measure of public cooperation than the mail response rate, which includes vacant and nonresidential addresses in the denominator in addition to occupied housing units (see Box 3-1 in Chapter 31.
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From page 164... ...
The list/enumerate procedure in 1990 differed somewhat from that used in 2000: Postal Service carriers delivered unaddressed short-form questionnaires to housing units in 1990 and census enumerators then came by to pick up completed questionnaires or obtain the answers, list the housing units in an address register, and at a predesignated subset of units, collect responses to the sample (long-form) questions.
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From page 165... ...
The mail response rate declined Mom 75 percent in 1980 to 65 percent in 1990; the mail return rate declined from 81 percent in 1980 to 74 percent in 1990. FIELD FOLLOW-UP Because not all households will mail back a form and because many addresses to which questionnaires are delivered will turn out to be vacant or nonresidential, the 2000 census, like previous censuses, included a large field follow-up operation (see Thompson, 20001.
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From page 166... ...
About 6 percent of the workload was reinterviewed in all, and 6N1lFU enumerators could also enumerate housing units they identified that were not on the address list; however, field observation suggested that LCOs and enumerators did not consider checking the completeness of the address list to be part of the enumerator's job. 7 enumerators were instructed to be very diligent in this regard and to assure households that duplicate responses would be handled in the census processing.
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From page 167... ...
Coverage Improvement Follow-Up The coverage improvement follow-up effort that followed NRFU included several operations that involved about 8.7 million housing units. The largest portion of the workload comprised 6.5 million housing units that had been classified as vacant or delete in NRFU.
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From page 168... ...
(These two offices are included in the total of seven in which partial reenumeration occurred.) Overall, CIFU determined that 27 percent of the 8.7 million housing units visited were occupied, 43 percent were vacant, and 30 percent should be deleted.
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From page 169... ...
In addition to the recheck of vacant and delete units, the 1990 field followup operation revisited failed-edit mail returns. These cases were mail returns that lacked sufficient information to be processed and for which telephone follow-up was not successful (see "Data Processing," below)
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From page 170... ...
, local jurisdictions nationwide were invited to review preliminary census counts of housing units by block for their areas (U.S. Census Bureau, 1993:6-45 to 6-46~.
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From page 171... ...
OUTREACH EFFORTS To supplement field operations and special programs to improve population coverage and cooperation with the census, the Census Bureau engaged in large-scale advertising and outreach efforts for 2000. For the first time, the Census Bureau budget included funds ($167 million)
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From page 172... ...
A telecommunications network linked Census Bureau headquarters in Suitland, Maryland; 12 permanent regional offices; the Bureau's permanent computer center in Bowie, Maryland; 12 regional census centers and the Puerto Rico iiData processing also included a series of computer systems for management of operations, including payroll, personnel, and management information systems.
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From page 173... ...
Data Capture The first step in data processing was to check in the questionnaires and capture the data on them in computerized form. The return address on mailback questionnaires directed them to one of four data capture centers the Bureau's National Processing Center and three run by contractors.
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From page 174... ...
In all, 9 percent of census housing units had two returns and 0.4 percent had three or more returns. In most instances, the operation of the PSA discarded duplicate household returns or extra vacant returns.
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From page 175... ...
After imputing household size (and, if necessary, first imputing occupancy status and status as a housing unit) , the computer duplicated another occupied
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From page 176... ...
The 1960 census employed computers for imputation, using cold decks and hot decks. The hot deck method was developed and refined so that by the 1980 census, the computer could search for the best match for a person or household missing one or more related data items on the basis of a large number of known characteristics instead of the one or two characteristics used in the past.
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From page 177... ...
were substituted because the number of persons was known for their household but no other information was available. For these households, the computer duplicated another housing unit record in the nearby area of the same household size.
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From page 178... ...
After completion of follow-up, the questionnaires were sent to the processing offices for data capture and computerized editing and imputation. Another step in data processing included the search/match operation, in which forms received from various activities were checked against completed questionnaires for the same address to determine which people should be added to the household roster and which were duplicates.
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