Introduction

Every 10 years the Census Bureau conducts a decennial census of population and housing. As part of the census, detailed demographic, socioeconomic, and housing data are collected from about one in six households to support hundreds of federal laws. As a consequence, these critical data are required by hundreds of federal laws every ten years. To meet the challenges of rapid demographic and technological changes and meet the needs of stakeholders, the Census Bureau developed the American Community Survey (ACS) as an alternative method of collecting these critical data. Data collection for the ACS will occur throughout the decade rather than just once in ten years. Eventually, the ACS will provide yearly estimates of the distribution of characteristics of the population and housing in small areas such as census tracts.  

As the Census Bureau prepares to move into full implementation of the ACS, all sources of error in the ACS are being looked at to be certain that methods in place are sound and to identify areas of possible improvement. Survey response rates are calculated annually for the ACS to assess the potential for unit nonresponse error.

The survey response rate for the ACS was 95.1 percent in 2000 and 96.7 percent in 2001. Despite excellent response rates, it is still possible to introduce bias if the respondent characteristics differ from characteristics for nonrespondents (Groves and Couper, 1998).

In this study we take advantage of 2000 decennial census data to study the characteristics of ACS nonrespondents and to look at the ACS noninterview adjustment procedures.