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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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1

Introduction

Conducting the decennial census of population and housing of the United States is a gargantuan task that never gets easier, with each of the nation’s previous counts facing its share of new and major challenges in keeping up with a growing population. Accordingly, the general plan for the 2020 Census was developed to follow a stylized, high-level cadence forged from the combination of deadlines written into law and the lessons learned from past decades. In that high-level ideal, the topics and specific questions for the 2020 Census would be settled three years and two years in advance of the April 1, 2020, Census Day, respectively,1 and a comprehensive dress-rehearsal test two years in advance of Census Day would allow for final revisions to systems and processes. Then, in 2020 itself, questionnaire delivery (whether by mail or by field staff) and collection of census responses would be carefully timed to be as concentrated around Census Day as possible. Doing so would not only promote the accuracy of the census count as of the Census Day reference moment but also help mitigate potential coverage problems—for instance, making an early push to follow-up with nonresponding households in areas around colleges and universities to best capture student housing arrangements, and finishing main field operations at the end of July to minimize operational disruption from hurricane season. Late-summer cessation of main census field work would

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1 Specifically, the Secretary of Commerce is required to submit the census topics “not later than 3 years before the appropriate census date” and the specific questions not later than two years prior by 13 U.S.C. § 141(f). These submissions are made to the congressional committees with authorization oversight for the census, which have historically reacted to proposed changes, but there is no mechanism for congressional approval or ratification of the topics or questions.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

also permit the smaller-scale but critically important Postenumeration Survey2 to be conducted within reasonable temporal proximity of Census Day and, more importantly, allow several months of processing time to produce state-level population totals by December 31 and then detailed data for legislative redistricting by March 30, 2021, as required by law.3

Even accounting for the ever-increasing difficulty of the task, the 2020 Census may safely be said to have confronted a truly staggering array of challenges, and deviations from the ideal census timeline arose early and often. Each of fiscal years 2013 through 2021 saw much or all of the federal government operate under continuing resolution—continuing spending at the previous year’s levels until enactment of new appropriations—for weeks or months into the fiscal year.4 The continuing resolutions would sometimes grant the Census Bureau authority to continue spending at an increased rate to keep the 2020 Census on schedule5 but without a sense of what the final approved funding level would be. The resulting uncertainty prompted some difficult resource prioritization for the census, including the cancellation of some census field testing activities in 2017 and the consolidation of the 2018 End-to-End Census Test to one geographic site rather than three.6 Another major pressure emerged in March 2018 when commerce secretary Wilbur Ross issued a decision memorandum directing the addition of a question on U.S. citizenship status to the 2020 questionnaire. The secretary’s decision was consistent with the legally mandated deadline for submitting specific questions, if not the earlier deadline for identifying topics. But adding a question—any question—at such a late stage and without testing in the census process is fraught with risk. It was necessarily too late to include the question in the 2018 End-to-End Census Test that was then underway, and the late addition of a question specific to citizenship and immigration status generated particularly strong

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2 As described later in the report, the Postenumeration Survey is a primary method for assessing census quality through the estimation of coverage undercounts or overcounts. The Glossary in Appendix A describes this and other terms. The first results from the 2020 Postenumeration Survey were released by the Census Bureau on March 10, 2022, as this report was in the late stages of review.

3 These requirements, keyed to 9 months and 12 months after Census Day, are defined in 13 U.S.C. § 141(b)–(c).

4 See the Appropriations Status Tables maintained by the Congressional Research Service at https://crsreports.congress.gov/AppropriationsStatusTable.

5 For example, Section 122 of the first continuing resolution for fiscal year 2020 (enacted as P.L. 116-59 on September 27, 2019) allowed spending on the Census Bureau’s “Periodic Censuses and Programs” line item “up to the rate for operations necessary to maintain the schedule and deliver the required data according to the statutory deadlines in the 2020 Decennial Census Program” (133 Stat. 1098).

6 Specifically, the Census Bureau abandoned field tests planned in Puerto Rico and American Indian lands in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington; see https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/director/2016/10/u_s_census_bureaua.html. The 2018 End-to-End Test was originally planned to operate in Pierce County, Washington, and Bluefield-Beckley-Oak Hill, West Virginia, as well as Providence County, Rhode Island. Though preparatory address canvassing operations took place in all three sites, the test was scaled back to Providence only.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

public concern that the question would depress response to the census, both generally and among noncitizen and immigrant communities.7 The decision to add the citizenship question quickly and deeply enmeshed the 2020 Census in litigation. Ultimately, a permanent injunction against adding the citizenship question was entered in federal district court in July 2019 after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the New York district court’s January 2019 opinion that the decision violated the Administrative Procedures Act (New York v. Department of Commerce, 2019; Department of Commerce v. New York, 2019); however, Executive Order No. 13880 (2019) would call for collection of citizenship and immigration data through administrative records sources.

Though the path had already been arduous, it would be the novel coronavirus SRS-CoV-2—and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic—that would initiate the most massive disruptions to the 2020 Census. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, and officially declared a U.S. national emergency by Presidential Proclamation No. 9994 (2021) on March 13 (effective retroactive to March 1). Puerto Rico issued a territorial stay-at-home order on March 15, and California became the first state to issue a full stay-at-home order on March 19, though individual jurisdictions had taken emergency actions previously—and other states followed suit quickly. For the 2020 Census, with its anchor to an April 1 reference date, the timing could hardly be worse. As the carefully planned sequence of census mailings was underway and field enumerators were set to deliver questionnaires or conduct interviews in rural areas without direct mail delivery to individual dwellings,8 the Census Bureau was instead forced to declare a comprehensive pause in operations on March 18. The COVID-19-induced pause would delay the start and completion of core census field operations by weeks and months, with substantial direct effects: months and years of planned “get out the count” activity and messaging was suddenly outmoded if not rendered impossible to implement; group quarters like college dormitories and health care facilities—already challenging to count—became even more formidable difficulties, with their populations forced to scatter or sequestered in unreachable space. The Census Bureau’s National Processing Center suddenly found itself having to become a massive provider and deployer of personal protective equipment and other supplies, amidst severe national shortages of the same, as census field

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7 See, for instance, numerous amicus curiae briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Department of Commerce v. New York (2019) on the court’s docket at https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-966.html, including from the American Statistical Association and from several former Census Bureau directors. In June 2018, the proposed addition of a citizenship question was part of a Federal Register notice, seeking approval to conduct the 2020 Census information collection under the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act (83 FR 26643); many of the 79,002 public comments (at https://www.regulations.gov/document/USBC-2018-0005-0001) were reactions to the citizenship item.

8 These field activities in rural areas are known as Update Leave and Update Enumerate operations.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

staff began to start knocking on doors in the midst of an infectious disease pandemic. But, importantly, delayed census field operations would also have to confront in full force the natural disasters known to be disruptive in late summer, and 2020 provided many of these as well: Tropical Storm Marco and Hurricane Laura making landfall in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast on August 24 and August 26, Hurricane Sally making landfall in Alabama on September 16, and Tropical Storm Beta making landfall in Texas on September 21, along with a particularly intense wildfire season in the western United States (particularly California, Oregon, and Washington) and subsequent poor air quality in August and September. Similarly, civil unrest in numerous communities in May–August 2020 would create challenging conditions for census managers and field staff to work.

On April 13, 2020, the Census Bureau issued a new timeline, extending census field data collection through October 31, 2020, and seeking a four-month extension in its data delivery deadlines; see Table 1.1. However, Congress did not act on this request,9 and the statutory deadlines loomed as the Bureau worked to resume field operations as conditions warranted. In July 2020, a Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Commerce (2020) declared the presidential administration’s policy to remove unlawful immigrants from the census counts used for apportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives—calling for these estimates to be delivered alongside the 2020 Census state-level totals required by census statute. Accordingly, on August 3, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross approved a “Replan” schedule (also depicted in Table 1.1)10 calling for census operations to conclude on September 30, based on a Census Bureau suggestion that this was the latest end date that could feasibly support meeting the December 31 apportionment deadline. These developments spurred a new wave of litigation, amidst concern that the census was being inappropriately rushed. As summarized in Box 1.1, the operational end date shifted as a result of court orders and appeals until the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in an unsigned order in National Urban League v. Ross (2020), clearing the way for 2020 Census field operations to conclude on

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9 Standalone bills to extend the census deadlines in the House and the Senate (H.R.8250 and S.4571, 116th Congress) did not advance beyond referral to committee. Identical text was included in the coronavirus relief bill (Health Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, or HEROES Act; H.R.6800) that passed the House 208–199 on May 15, 2020, but did not progress beyond referral to committee in the Senate; when the Senate acted on coronavirus relief, it was in the form of a supplemental appropriations bill that, by nature, cannot make legislative actions like a revision to Title 13. Though effectively mooted because the December 31, 2020, deadline had passed, the standalone bills were reintroduced in the 117th Congress, but also have not advanced beyond committee referral.

10 See also Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham’s August 3 statement, announcing the plan “to accelerate the completion of data collection and apportionment counts by our statutory deadline of December 31, 2020, as required by law and directed by the Secretary of Commerce” (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/delivering-complete-accurate-count.html).

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

October 15. The statutory deadlines remained operative, but Census Bureau staff found that they could not complete the post-data collection processing and editing in time. On December 30, the Census Bureau acknowledged that it would miss the December 31 apportionment deadline but indicated that it would work to deliver the numbers “in early 2021, as close to the statutory deadline as possible.”11 Ultimately, Census Bureau staff would hold the line, the Presidential Memorandum on undocumented immigrants was revoked by the new presidential administration in Executive Order No. 13986 (2021) of January 2021, and the 2020 Census apportionment numbers would be released (as initially replanned) in April 2021.

The preceding is a brief and incomplete summary of the challenges faced by the 2020 Census—and those challenges are a strong reminder that there are no small stakes when it comes to the U.S. census. Beyond the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of an “actual enumeration” for the allocation of political power among the states (apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and, correspondingly, in the Electoral College for presidential elections) and the redistricting of legislative boundaries, the data from each U.S. Census have become a foundational resource for many uses and users at all levels of government, by businesses and industries, and by the public at large. Each decennial census becomes the linchpin of the American information infrastructure, helping to shape decisions and programs for many years, and so it is of paramount importance that the operations of the decennial census and the quality of the resulting data be rigorously examined. Even more so than in previous decades, the nation and the full array of stakeholders in the decennial census face a daunting and difficult question relative to this particular census, conducted amidst circumstances so dire: Of what quality is the 2020 Census and its data?

1.1 THE PANEL, ITS CHARGE, AND ITS OPERATIONS

Recognizing the need for independent, external review, the Census Bureau asked the JASON advisory group12 to make an initial assessment of “2020 Census Data Quality Processes” a focus of its winter meetings in January 2021, resulting in a quick turn-around letter report in February 2021 (JASON, 2021). Further, the Census Bureau began to work with a Task Force on 2020 Census Quality Indicators assembled under the auspices of the American Statistical

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11 See the statement at https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-census-update-apportionment.html.

12 JASON is an independent group of scientists administratively operating through the MITRE Corporation that is engaged to advise the federal government on science and technology matters, much of its work in the defense and intelligence arenas.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

Table 1.1 Original, Initial Replanned, and Final Milestone and Operational Dates in the 2020 Census

Activity/Operation Original Apr 13, 2020, COVID-19 Adjustments Aug 3, 2020, Replan Final

Self-Response Phase

Mar 12–Jul 31

Mar 12–Oct 31

Mar 12–Sep 30a

Mar 12–Oct 15

Update Leave (Stateside)

Mar 15–Apr 17

Jun 13–Jul 9

Phased reopening between May 4–Jun 12

Phased reopening between May 4–Jun 12

Service Based Enumeration

Mar 30–Apr 1

Needs further review and coordination with outside partners and stakeholders

Sep 22–24

Sep 22–24

Targeted Non-Sheltered Outdoor Locations

Mar 31–Apr 1

Needs further review and coordination with outside partners and stakeholders

Sep 23–24

Sep 23–24

Group Quarters Enumeration

Apr 2–Jun 5

Jul 1–Sep 3

Apr 2–Sep 3

Apr 2–Sep 3

Enumeration of Transitory Locations

Apr 9–May 4

Tentatively Sep 3–Sep 28, but may need further review and coordination

Sep 3–28

Sep 3–28

Nonresponse Followup

May 13–Jul 31

Aug 11–Oct 31

Aug 9–Sep 30a

Aug 9–Oct 15

Deliver Apportionment Data

By statutory deadline:b Dec 31, 2020

By Apr 30, 2021

As close to statutory deadline as possible

Apr 26, 2021

Deliver Redistricting Data

By statutory deadline:b Mar 30, 2021

By Jul 31, 2021

As close to statutory deadline as possible

Aug 12, 2021

a From September 28–October 2, 2020, end date was set to October 5. See Box 1.1 for further explanation.

b Delivery deadlines set by 13 U.S.C. § 141(a) and (c).

SOURCE: Adapted from Fontenot (2021).

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

Association.13 Issuing a preliminary report in October 2020 (2020 Census Quality Indicators Task Force, 2020), the ASA Task Force designated a small number of data analysts to work with the Census Bureau on designing a set of census quality indicators. After receiving reports from its analysis team (Biemer et al., 2021) as well as supplemental work from within its membership (Fay, 2021; Hogan, 2021), the task force issued its final report on quality indicators through the release of state-level apportionment totals from the 2020 Census in

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13 The Task Force was originally co-chaired by Nancy Potok, former chief statistician of the United States, and Robert Santos, Urban Institute and president of the American Statistical Association. Santos stepped down as co-chair and member of the task force in April 2021 upon being nominated as director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

September 2021 (2020 Census Quality Indicators Task Force, 2021). Moreover, the task force formally passed the baton for longer-range, more intensive study of the 2020 Census and its quality to a third body involved in independent, external review: this panel.

The U.S. Census Bureau requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) establish this Panel to Evaluate the Quality of the 2020 Census, giving it a very general and expansive statement of task. That charge to the panel reads:

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will appoint an ad hoc panel to review and evaluate the quality of the data that were collected in the 2020 Census. As part of its work, the panel will:

  1. Review information from the Census Bureau on the data collected as well as various process measures and indicators of data quality obtained as part of the 2020 Census operations;
  2. Review other available information, such as results from demographic analysis, process measures and preliminary results from the post-enumeration survey; and analyses of administrative records; and
  3. Consider the results from evaluations of similar indicators from the 2010 and 2000 Censuses.

The panel will produce an interim report with its initial findings and conclusions, and a final report that includes conclusions about the quality of the data collected in the 2020 Census and makes recommendations for further research by the Census Bureau to evaluate the quality of the 2020 data and to begin planning the 2030 Census. The panel’s reports will be reviewed according to institutional review procedures and released publicly on the National Academies Press web site.

The Committee on National Statistics at the National Academies has conducted numerous studies related to the decennial census over the decades, many concerning the planning and testing for the census, and this current panel marks the third consecutive U.S. census in which a National Academies panel has been convened to perform a review. Just as the circumstances of the 2020 Census are unlike any other, this review also differs from its predecessors. In the 2000 Census, the possible statistical adjustment of census returns to account for coverage errors (undercount or overcount, found through a postenumeration survey) was still a live issue and dominant concern. Accordingly, the Panel to Review the 2000 Census (National Research Council, 2001, 2004) focused heavily on the coverage measurement apparatus and the quality evaluations of both the 2000 Census itself and the postenumeration survey (known as the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation, or ACE). In the 2010 Census, attention changed to more existential and operational concerns, when highly publicized troubles with the Census Bureau’s Field Data Collection Automation contract (and particularly its attempt to use handheld devices for data collection)

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

prompted a late, costly reversion to all-paper-based operations.14 Tasked with reviewing that census, the Panel to Review the 2010 Census mounted a comprehensive set of site visits to observe census operations unfold at the regional and local levels. However, as it continued its work, both the panel and the Census Bureau grew more interested in shifting the focus from post-hoc review of 2010 to the very early planning and testing for 2020 (deriving lessons learned from the 2010 observations). Hence, the report of the Panel to Review the 2010 Census posited four major areas for research and development—automation of field operations, Internet response, modernized updating of geographic and address databases, and increased use of administrative records data—that developed into the pillars of 2020 Census operations (National Research Council, 2011). A subsequent Standing Committee on Reengineering Census Methods, drawing heavily from the membership of the 2010 Review panel, continued offering informal advice on the developing 2020 Census plans until 2017.

Our Panel to Evaluate the Quality of the 2020 Census will draw elements of its approach from its predecessor census review panels, but must also differ from them in substantive ways. Our review must be thoroughgoing and cannot make any single operation as primary a focus as the 2000 Review Panel was able to afford the 2000 Census coverage evaluation program. Similarly, the challenges confronting the 2020 Census raise fundamental questions about the credibility and quality of 2020 Census data tabulations for the public at large. So, while our panel will comment on directions for the 2030 Census based on 2020 experience (as indicated in our charge), we cannot make “the next census” our paramount concern as the 2010 Review panel did.

In furtherance of its charge, our panel held three meetings in consecutive months, in July, August, and September, 2021, and a fourth in November 2021, prior to this report. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, all the meetings were in virtual format, though all four included public sessions. The agendas for all these public sessions appear in Appendix B. The first meeting largely reprised—and updated, with six additional months of developments—briefings by the Census Bureau for the JASON (2021) advisory group. That first meeting closed with a first operation-specific overview on address list development and Address Canvassing operations; Census Bureau staff could not present or discuss actual evaluation results because none of its internal evaluation/assessment reports are yet complete, but they provided an overview of the way the operation proceeded in the past, how it was planned to occur in 2020, and how it actually took place in light of the pandemic and other challenges. In its subsequent meetings, the panel requested that the Census Bureau do similar operational overviews on individual census operations or groups of related operations. The

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14 The handheld computers were abandoned for use in the major Nonresponse Follow-Up operation in 2010, but were still used by field staff for the Address Canvassing operation in 2009.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

panel also heard perspectives from 2020 Census field staff at the regional and Area Census Office levels in its second meeting,15 from the staff of the Census Bureau’s National Processing Center in its third meeting, and from a small group of panel-invited external census stakeholders in its fourth meeting.

1.2 DATA ANALYSIS SUBGROUP

A critical component in this panel’s forthcoming work, enshrined in the proposal and contract for the work if not in the short statement of task, is the designation of a data analysis subgroup of the panel. Following the example that the Census Bureau set with the ASA Task Force on Census Quality Indicators, the panel’s data analysis subgroup has gone through additional information technology clearance with the Census Bureau. The expectation is that the subgroup will work with the Census Bureau to specify tabulations and analyses of 2020 Census operational data and metadata and will be able to review those data behind Census Bureau firewalls, on Census Bureau servers. The intent is that the data analysis subgroup will be able to convey its general impressions and conclusions from the protected data to the broader panel membership for consideration and discussion. Any tabulations or analytical results to be published—or even to be shared with the broader panel membership—will need to go through the Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board approval process.

We will discuss this arrangement and its implications further in Chapter 4. At the outset, though, it is important to note that our panel’s independent review of the conduct of the 2020 Census is necessarily contingent on the provision of data by the Census Bureau. It is also essential to note that the panel’s data analysis subgroup is just beginning its work in earnest, the process of obtaining clearance taking considerable time and the Census Bureau’s need to finalize the 2020 census apportionment and redistricting data products taking priority.

1.3 OVERVIEW OF THIS REPORT

In characterizing this first report, it is important that expectations be calibrated. Because the panel is just getting started in its analysis, and because the Census Bureau has yet to complete and release any of its own evaluation and assessment reports on 2020 Census operations, this first report is necessarily a plan and a framework for what is to come rather than a true interim, first-pass

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15 This discussion session with 2020 Census field staff was meant to be suggestive, and not a representative sample of all levels of the field staff hierarchy. The Panel to Review the 2010 Census held a similar discussion with field staff at its November 2010 meeting in Washington, DC, but had the distinct advantage of being able to invite the field staff itself based on its extensive site visits. For expedience, the group of field staff in our August 2021 meeting were identified and recruited by the Census Bureau’s Field Division.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

assessment of the quality of the 2020 Census as a whole. It cannot and should not be expected to be a comprehensive answer to the panel’s expansive charge, but it is an important opportunity to lay down markers for what will follow (ideally, in considerable volume) in the year to come.

In Chapter 2, we discuss the meaning of quality, error, and success in the U.S. census context and outline the traditional means by which the quality of a decennial census is examined. In Chapter 3, we return to the story begun above in Section 1.1—the initial reviews of the 2020 Census that have been performed by the JASON advisory group and the ASA Task Force—and provide additional detail on their findings. We close in Chapter 4 with thoughts on the path ahead for the panel’s analysis of 2020 Census operational and quality data, and those high-level conclusions that may already be drawn concerning the 2020 Census.

In the absence of data, we strive to keep the discussion and narrative in this report brief—deferring more extensive articulation of component 2020 Census operations and their historical timelines to fuller treatment in the panel’s final report. As an aid, Appendix A is a glossary of terms introduced in this text, for reference, and the public meeting agendas compiled in Appendix B also convey the extent of procedural discussions and operational overviews received by the panel in its first four meetings.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
×

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census: Interim Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26529.
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The decennial census is foundational to the functioning of American democracy, and maintaining the public's trust in the census and its resulting data is a correspondingly high-stakes affair. The 2020 Census was implemented in light of severe and unprecedented operational challenges, adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and other disruptions. This interim report from a panel of the Committee on National Statistics discusses concepts of error and quality in the decennial census as prelude to the panel’s forthcoming fuller assessment of 2020 Census data, process measures, and quality metrics. The panel will release a final report that will include conclusions about the quality of the 2020 Census and make recommendations for further research by the U.S. Census Bureau to plan the 2030 Census.

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