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5 Mirroring America: Living Situations and the Census
Pages 165-178

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From page 165...
... Empirical information on ambiguous residence groups and their response to different question styles and enumeration approaches is rare; the stand-alone 1993 Living Situation Survey (see Box 5-2) and the Alternative Questionnaire Experiment conducted as part of the 2000 165
From page 166...
... No set of residence rules or set of questions, however carefully developed and articulated, can completely eliminate error in the reporting of residence. Individual living situations, as well as respondents' ability, willingness, and incentive to answer questions, are too varied to be addressed by any single procedure or "one size fits all" approach to data collection.
From page 167...
... found that examination of "complex households" in six socioeconomic groups highlighted key differences between the Census Bureau's definition of "household" and the definition envisioned by respondents. For instance, the Census Bureau's conception of a household as the set of all persons living in one housing unit runs contrary to the experience of Navajo Indians and Inupiaq Eskimos, for whom family ties are more central to the notion of a household than physical location.
From page 168...
... Interviewers performed personal visits, contacting a household respondent for each sampled housing unit and asking that respondent to list all the persons associated with that unit within the previous 2­3 months. The interviewer then guided the respondent through a series of 13 roster questions; though some emulated the decennial census usual residence approach, the LSS questionnaires did not provide residence rule cues such as lists of specific include/exclude suggestions.
From page 169...
... ; five of these focused on changes to the cues used to help respondents navigate through the census long form, and one presented the 2000 census short-form questions but used the design conventions of the 1990 census. The two panels of key interest from the perspective of census residence rules were a modified short form with revised residence and roster questions and a control group consisting of the standard 2000 census short form.
From page 170...
... As a final example, a consistent approach would seem to be desirable for handling housing units that are inherently mobile and not tied to a particular land location, whether they have small "crews" (long-haul trucks, trains, or recreational vehicles) or large ones (military and commercial sea vessels)
From page 171...
... Person is a usual resident of: This household 6. Person is a student attending school below the college level such as a boarding school or a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school.
From page 172...
... Person is a domestic worker who "lives in". Person is a usual resident of: Determine if the worker occupies a housing unit separate from the main household: If "NO," list on this household questionnaire.
From page 173...
... c. Do not enumerate students or children living or boarding with a household in your ED while attending some regular school below the college level in the locality, and having a usual place of residence elsewhere from which they will be reported.
From page 174...
... The resources available for research and refinement of techniques to improve the count are relatively scarce, particularly in the years between censuses. Yet the types of living situations described in this report require continued research to inform improvements in enumeration methods.
From page 175...
... We urge the Bureau to facilitate ties with external researchers to carry out research objectives, but -- pursuant with the practice of in-house analysis -- the Census Bureau needs to take a stronger interest in analyzing and interpreting their own data to guide operational improvements. Given their unique access to their own microdata and operational results, there are some problems that the Census Bureau itself must analyze simply because there is no one else who can.
From page 176...
... 5­B.3 Basic Research on Living Situations In this closing section, we suggest selected topics that are particularly ripe for basic research, several of which could be done using extant data resources internal to the Census Bureau. This is a selected list, and should not be interpreted as either a comprehensive list or as a specification of the highest priority research topics.
From page 177...
... If there is some instinctive tendency to list household members in rough age order, this structural feature of the census form could help explain undercounting of children and babies; it may also be the case that persons not listed in positions 1­6 are those with the weakest ties to the household, and they may be potential duplicate cases. This potential phenomenon is important to understand for the purposes of an accurate count, but is particularly important with regard to the long-form replacement American Community Survey (ACS)
From page 178...
... It is surprising that it has been over a decade since the Census Bureau sponsored its LSS; a return to collection of hard data on ambiguous residence situations and questionnaire strategies is long overdue. Recommendation 5.5: Data similar to those collected by the 1993 LSS should be conducted on a regular basis.


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