Realizing the Potential of the American Community Survey Challenges, Tradeoffs, and Opportunities (2015) / Chapter Skim
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3 Data Collection Methods
3 Data Collection Methods
Pages 46-58
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From page 46... ...
The goal of the Census Bureau's multimode data collection strategy is to maximize response rates in a cost-effective manner. Prior to the implementation of the Internet option, in 2012, the weighted distribution of the responses by mode was as follows: close to half (48 percent)
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From page 47... ...
. following three sections cover nonresponse follow-up, adaptive design, and mode effects and data quality; the panel's recommendations on these topics are at the end of each section.
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From page 48... ...
. The panel's understanding is that this effort is currently limited to locating landline numbers and does not include cell phones.
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From page 49... ...
are determined by taking into account the costs of CAPI relative to other data collection modes. However, the Census Bureau's approach to tracking costs is not well adapted to monitoring costs per completed interview by mode, much less distinguishing costs of early respondents from those requiring multiple contact attempts before an interview is obtained.
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From page 50... ...
It is important to note that the nonresponse follow-up subsampling rates were developed before the full implementation of the ACS and before the implementation of the Internet response option, which might affect response rates in other modes. On the basis of testing conducted before the Internet response was introduced, the Census Bureau anticipated that in addition to generating savings in areas such as printing, mailing, and data capture, the availability of the Internet response option might also lead to a slight overall increase in self-response.
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From page 51... ...
As shown in Table 3-2, there are demographic differences in the likelihood of responding at each stage of the follow-up process. As a consequence, it is possible that reducing follow-up effort and thereby attaining lower response rates would not necessarily lead to substantially different estimates, once the data were weighted for differential nonresponse, if the follow-up were to be reduced based on careful analysis.
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From page 52... ...
From a survey operations perspective, the most critical next step is to implement a much more precise system for tracking data collection costs than currently exists. Although this will involve some up-front costs due to changes or additions needed to the current survey management systems, the precise tracking of all aspects of the data collection costs is essential to inform the ongoing work to optimize the allocation of resources.
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From page 53... ...
RECOMMENDATION 6: The Census Bureau should evaluate the possibility of improving the American Community Survey's accuracy at a fixed cost by truncating nonresponse follow-up or using modeling techniques to replace some of the nonresponse follow-up, particularly for the more expensive data collection modes. ADAPTIVE DESIGN As discussed above, recent research indicates that the relationship between response rates and data quality is complex, and higher response rates do not always necessarily lead to better data quality (Groves, 2006; Groves and Peytcheva, 2008)
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From page 54... ...
RECOMMENDATION 7: The Census Bureau should conduct research on potential ways of identifying cell phone numbers associated with adult household members and instruct American Community Survey field interviewers in proper protocols for calling cell phone numbers, as needed. The Census Bureau has several ongoing research projects to identify ways in which adaptive design can be further incorporated into the survey.
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From page 55... ...
Postal Service -- National Change of address flag 100 Change of Address Database National Telecommunications and Broadband flag 96 Information Administration Internal Revenue Service Total income reported for 66 2010 (form 1040) 2010 Census -- Advertising Targeted stratum 100 SOURCE: Chestnut (2013, p.
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From page 56... ...
were being completed using the Internet option. To date, relatively little research has been published evaluating the Internet mode since its implementation, and the Census Bureau has not yet conducted formal studies of mode bias, but tests conducted prior to the implementation found few significant differences in response error between the Internet and mail modes and very low response error rates across most estimates examined (Horwitz et al., 2012)
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From page 57... ...
RECOMMENDATION 10: The Census Bureau should conduct a thor ough evaluation of potential mode effects on both data quality and nonresponse in the American Community Survey, focusing in particular on the newly introduced Internet mode.
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From page 58... ...
RECOMMENDATION 11: The Census Bureau should conduct research to understand what types of devices are used by American Community Survey respondents to connect to the Internet and whether there are any associated data quality implications.
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