Until very recently, relatively little information was available concerning the differential undercount of minority groups, especially Hispanics. What is known about the differential net undercount of racial and ethnic minorities has been obtained through demographic analysis (Robinson 1991; Robinson, et al. 1991 and Robinson 1988), post enumeration surveys (Hogan 1991) and, most recently, a handful of studies based on data from Census Bureau sponsored small area ethnographic studies (de la Puente 1993).

This paper is based on data from these small area ethnographic studies. This effort is known as the Ethnographic Evaluation of the Behavioral Causes of Census Undercount (hereinafter referred to as the Ethnographic Evaluation), one of the projects in the Census Bureau’s Research, Evaluation and Experimental Programs for the 1990 Census. Data for the Ethnographic Evaluation were collected in 29 sample areas. Twenty eight of these sample areas were located in the continental U.S. and one was located in Puerto Rico. The sample areas were selected because they were difficult to enumerate and populated with historically undercounted minorities -- Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and American Indians.