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Envisioning the 2020 Census (2010) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
Pages 15-20

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From page 15...
... Marshals on horseback have given way to temporary enumerators working for a permanent Census Bureau, methods based solely on personal visits to those relying principally on the mail, and a long-form sample of respondents providing additional socioeconomic data to the continuous American Community Survey. The machinery of census-taking has changed as well, from handwritten ledgers to Hollerith punch cards to the first UNIVAC computer to modern document-scanning technology.
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From page 16...
... . Three decades later, the Census Bureau's plan for the 1940 census included the first formal, structured set of evaluations of census content and quality in a decennial census; the procedural history of the 1940 census commissioned by the Bureau describes a series of analyses of the data quality for individual question items as well as limited work to estimate the level of underenumeration in the census (Jenkins, 1983:96–104)
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From page 17...
... No exception from its recent predecessors, the upcoming 2010 census has been designed to include a formal slate of experimentation and evaluation; early in the planning process, the Census Bureau dubbed this effort the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments, or CPEX for short. 1–A THE PANEL, ITS CHARGE, AND PREVIOUS REPORTS The program evaluations of the 2000 census were sharply criticized by the National Research Council (2004a:Finding 1.11)
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From page 18...
... At the Census Bureau's request, the panel issued a first, interim report in late 2007 (National Research Council, 2008b) with the express intent of reviewing an initial list of general topics prepared by the Census Bureau's CPEX staff to identify key priorities.
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From page 19...
... We provide an updated description of what we know of the current plans for CPEX in Appendix B, because the Bureau has made some significant revisions to the program since the time of our letter report. But, although we critique the CPEX plans, we refrain from suggesting changes in this report for the simple reason that major change is effectively impossible due to the fast-approaching date of the 2010 census itself.
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From page 20...
... , and the Panel on Residence Rules in the Decennial Census (National Research Council, 2006)
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Key Terms

  • decennial census
  • operational data
  • census program
  • improve census
  • permanent census

  • census process
  • census operations
  • census included
  • cpex program
  • suggesting changes

  • initial list
  • data quality
  • administrative records
  • evaluation studies
  • internet data

  • previous reports
  • panel issued
  • census evaluation
  • previous census
  • census quality

  • replan census
  • census board
  • census provides
  • census forms
  • census content

  • census purposes
  • temporary census
  • reduce census
  • census commissioned
  • census experimentation


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