Understanding the Quality of the 2020 Census Interim Report (2022) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 Frameworks for Understanding the Decennial Census and Its Quality
2 Frameworks for Understanding the Decennial Census and Its Quality
Pages 23-36
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From page 23... ...
Against this backdrop, the quality of the decennial census can be described as a composite of the accuracy -- the relative absence of or mitigation of error, substantial or systemic -- in both the data produced by census operations and the manner in which those procedures were carried out. This raises a second major issue that we describe in Section 2.2, which is that there is no unique or simple scorecard: quality assessment depends critically on the filters through which individual census operations or the census as a whole are viewed, the purposes of the decennial census and its data and their fitness for use in meeting those purposes.
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From page 24... ...
More fundamentally, coverage errors may occur due to imperfections in the Census Bureau's Master Address File, its inventory of physical addresses used to conduct and determine the progress of the count. Improving address list development was a major focus area for innovation and improvement in the 2020 Census, but -- despite all best efforts -- it is exceedingly difficult to maintain an absolutely 1 The final residence criteria for the 2020 Census were published in the Federal Register on February 8, 2018 (83 FR 5525)
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From page 25... ...
It follows that gaps and duplicates in the address list produce omissions and duplicates of the persons in those housing units. A second major category of census error is response error -- instances in which the information provided on a census questionnaire or data record is inaccurate.
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From page 26... ...
As we discuss in brief in this report, and will discuss in more depth in the final report, the mechanics of the DAS are considerably more complicated than represented here; additional information about the new disclosure avoidance methodology can be found in the proceedings of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2020) workshop on the 2020 Census data products and in the handbook released by the Census Bureau following the issuance of 2020 Census redistricting data (U.S.
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From page 27... ...
Understanding the quality of a census involves understanding the relative absence or control of error in the census data and in the way individual census operations were conducted, and forming a composite assessment of quality is a multifaceted problem. One's interpretation of the quality of a decennial census, and how one takes stock of the error inherent in census results, depends vitally on how one views the role and function of the census, how one intends to use the resulting census data, and how one weights these various uses and purposes.
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From page 28... ...
The U.S. census has always used addresses and housing unit locations as its organizational base; the quality and completeness of the Census Bureau's Master Address File (MAF)
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From page 29... ...
version of the Census Bureau's master Operational Plan for the 2020 Census (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018)
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From page 30... ...
Census Bureau Figure 2.1 Component operations of the 2020 Census, by major functional categories SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau (2018:Figure 6)
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From page 31... ...
Consequently, it is incumbent that the quality and success of the decennial census be judged, in part, by how the Census Bureau adhered to (or was permitted to adhere to) the standards expected of impartial statistical agencies.
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From page 32... ...
The key strengths of demographic analysis as a census evaluation tool include its intuitive simplicity -- it is easily understood, the challenges of measuring its individual components notwithstanding -- and the fact that its development is fully independent of decennial census operations. Indeed, for both the 2010 and 2020 Censuses, the first national-level demographic analysis estimates were released before the first census estimates (the national population and the state-level apportionment totals)
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From page 33... ...
Moreover, the accuracy of those demographic analysis estimates does still depend on race and Hispanic origin being defined and coded in comparative ways in the two censuses and the other component measures, which was not the case in 2020. For 2020, the Census Bureau introduced new approaches to coding of multiple race and Hispanic origin entries, and additional work and analysis remains to be done to facilitate comparisons of 2020 Census data with 2010 Census results and other data sources.
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From page 34... ...
Many population subgroups that are hard-to-count in the census context, such as the extremely impoverished, may be similarly unlikely to show up in tax rolls and other government program records.5 But, indeed, some of the Census Bureau's planned projects for its 2020 Census evaluations and experiments will attempt to draw census coverage lessons from comparison to administrative records sources. As we noted at the beginning of this chapter, census quality is a product of the accurate implementation of the individual operations and procedures used to plan and conduct the census as well as of the resulting data themselves.
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From page 35... ...
The increased automation of census field operations in the 2020 Census raises new and exciting possibilities for the analysis of operational process data -- some of which will have and should have been used by Census Bureau managers in real time during the count itself, this operational dashboard monitoring of information being an important capability enabled by new operational control systems. And the Census Bureau has commendably paired its releases of 2020 Census apportionment and redistricting data with more quality indicator metrics than have been provided at similar stages in earlier decennial censuses.
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