Realizing the Potential of the American Community Survey Challenges, Tradeoffs, and Opportunities (2015) / Chapter Skim
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4 Data Processing and Analytic Issues
4 Data Processing and Analytic Issues
Pages 59-77
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From page 59... ...
Since the long-form survey was administered as part of the decennial census enumeration, controls from the full count were used as a basis for controlling long-form estimates for small geographic areas, such as census tracts. In contrast, the ACS uses controls from the Census Bureau's population estimates program at the county level by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin, and at the subcounty level for the total population of incorporated cities and minor civil divisions (for those states that have those jurisdictions)
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From page 60... ...
The areas for which housing and population controls are created by this method include larger counties and groups of smaller counties. For legal or political areas at the subcounty level, such as incorporated cities and towns and minor civil divisions, the Census Bureau estimates population using an allocation based on housing units.
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From page 61... ...
The usefulness of the ACS data in such situations is undermined unless the population estimates that serve as controls reflect the actual conditions and rest on a solid empirical foundation. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, rendered the decennial census data for a sizable portion of Manhattan obsolete.
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From page 62... ...
Moreover, the Bureau has not developed controls for housing that adequately reflect the role of housing demise -- demolitions and the like -- since a model from the American Housing Survey is currently used in most places to gauge demolitions, not actual permit data. Confusion over the number of demolitions caused by superstorm Sandy, especially in communities on the New Jersey shore, may have caused the number to be understated, perhaps partly due to uncertainty over the status of housing units in situations where units may be standing but uninhabitable.
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From page 63... ...
DATA REVIEW Most of the ACS data review is carried out after 1 year's worth of data are edited and imputed and the data products (including those based on the multiyear datasets) are generated.
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From page 64... ...
• Verify any new or modified table shells. Multiyear Data Review • eview variable crosswalking and inflation adjustment on the unweighted R multiyear microdata, done by the Census Bureau's Population (POP)
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From page 65... ...
USING ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS The Census Bureau has several ongoing research projects on the potential use of administrative records, many housed in its Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications, which is a new interdisciplinary group within the Research and Methodology Directorate. These projects tend to be focused on the crucial step of evaluating the scope and quality of available administrative records databases, and the immediate interest is in the possible use of administrative records for modeling missing data or increasing operational efficiencies for the ACS.
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From page 66... ...
These datasets tend to contain basic demographic information. The ACS Match Study concluded that administrative records provided more than 90 percent coverage for addresses and persons in the 2010 ACS and around 75 percent coverage for person-address pairs.
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From page 67... ...
Reducing Bias Administrative records can be used to evaluate data accuracy, including bias resulting from sampling or survey nonresponse. This evaluation can be accomplished by comparing the individual-level characteristics of the survey respondents to matched person-level information from administrative records or by comparing aggregate survey responses to aggregate administrative records.
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From page 68... ...
RECOMMENDATION 16: The Census Bureau should coordinate efforts across units on research related to the potential use of admin istrative records, and when possible, the American Community Survey Office should build on the research being conducted in other units. Promising topics include the use of administrative records for adap tive design, as sources of data for items on the questionnaire, and to enhance estimation in the post data collection stages.
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From page 69... ...
Typically, these auxiliary variables are measured with better precision than the primary variables because of larger sample sizes in the auxiliary data, but conceptual differences or nonsampling errors make it unacceptable to simply substitute the auxiliary variable for the primary source (e.g., income and family composition data from tax returns as an auxiliary to ACS estimates of poverty rates, data from the previous decennial census as a source for population and housing characteristics when estimates are desired for a more recent year)
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From page 70... ...
In the first, the ACS itself is the primary information source and contains the target variables; in the other, the ACS provides auxiliary variables for estimation of a measure on another survey. Broadly, one might think of the first of these as filling the gap left by the smaller samples of the ACS relative to the decennial census while maintaining the improved currency of the ACS, and of the second as uses of the ACS to extend the level of detail of population surveys that typically are much smaller than the ACS.
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From page 71... ...
The transition from relying primarily on direct estimates to relying primarily on the model is seamless, in the sense that their relative weights vary continuously as a function of the precision of each. The SAHIE Program produces estimates of health insurance coverage by state and county, using data inputs and methods broadly similar to those of SAIPE.
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From page 72... ...
This fact suggests that it might be beneficial to adopt a more generic approach to small area estimation from ACS data so the full range of data products could be released for domains whose 1- or 3-year estimates are now suppressed. Nugent and Hawala (2012)
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From page 73... ...
This approach enables ACS data users to consider spatial supports other than those released for publication. In principle, spatio-temporal small area estimation models might be considered for the ACS.
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From page 74... ...
These simple computations apply regardless of how an analyst aggregates the data. To illustrate the outline for a fully model-based approach to synthesis, the data synthesizer might start with a list of housing units with some characteristics from the sampling frame or from the decennial census.
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From page 75... ...
. Third, ACS data are useful as an auxiliary data source for the small area estimation of variables from other population surveys (the second type of use defined above)
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From page 76... ...
Second, administrative restrictions are exacerbated by the major effort needed to prepare administrative datasets for statistical use, including geocoding to the appropriate levels of census geography. Optimally, this effort would be spread over the maximum number of uses of the data, so preparation of data could be made a priority for administrative records staff.
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From page 77... ...
RECOMMENDATION 17: The Census Bureau should continue its program of small area estimation using American Community Survey data, maintaining a balance of methodological research and develop ment of production applications directed to current user needs, meth ods for univariate and multivariate estimation, and intramural and extramural research. RECOMMENDATION 18: The Census Bureau should negotiate agreements with potential federal sources of auxiliary variables for small area estimation, allowing sharing of data for multiple develop mental and production uses, with suitable protections of confidential ity.
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