The American Community Survey

The American Community Survey (ACS), to be run by the Census Bureau, will be a large (250,000 housing units a month), predominantly mailout/mailback survey that will collect information similar to that on the decennial census long form. The development of this new survey raises interesting questions about methods used for combining information from surveys and from administrative records, weighting to treat nonresponse and undercoverage, estimation for small areas, sample design, and calibration of the output from this survey with that from the long form. To assist the Census Bureau in developing a research agenda to address these and other methodological issues, the Committee on National Statistics held a workshop on September 13, 1998. This report summarizes that workshop. Table of Contents Front Matter 1. Introduction 2. Combination of Information Across Areas 3. Combination of Information Across Time 4. Funding Formulas 5. Weighting and Imputation 6. Sample and Questionnaire Design 7. Calibration of the Long Form to ACS Output 8. Conclusion Appendix: An Example of Combining Information References