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The American Community Survey (ACS) is a project of the U.S. Census Bureau that replaces the long form in the decennial census. It is an ongoing statistical survey, sent to approximately 250,000 addresses monthly, and thus more current than information obtained by the long form.
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History
Many Americans found filling out the long form to be burdensome and intrusive, and its unpopularity was a factor in the declining response rate to the decennial census. In 1995, the Bureau began a process to change the means of demographic, housing, social, and economic information from the census long form to the ACS. Testing began in 1996, and the ACS program began producing test data in 2000, 2001, and 2002. The full program is expected to be implemented by 2010.
The legal authority for the ACS is 13 USC 141 and 193.
Implementation
The planned sample will be 3 million housing units and group quarters in the U.S., in every county, American Indian and Alaska Native area, and Hawaiian Homeland, and in Puerto Rico annually (250,000/month). Data will be collected primarily by mail, with Census Bureau follow up.
The Department of Commerce claims that those who receive a survey form are required to provide answers to a long list of questions about themselves and their families, including their profession, how much money they earn, their source of health insurance, their preferred mode of transportation to and from work, and the amount of money they pay for housing and utilities. Those who decline to answer these questions may receive follow-up phone calls and/or visits to their homes from Census Bureau personnel, and are threatened with prosecution and fines. No person has ever been charged with a crime for refusing to answer the ACS survey, which several US Representatives have challenged as unauthorized by the census act and violative of the Right to Financial Privacy Act. The Department of Commerce states that it is "not an enforcement agency."
The processed information will provide annual estimates for all states, as well as all cities, counties, metropolitan areas, and population groups of 65,000 people or more. For smaller areas, the Census Bureau expects useful samples to develop over time: over 3 years in areas with 20,000 to 65,000 people, and 5 years in areas with fewer than 20,000 people. The quality of these samples is expected to match that of the decennial census. However, the small area and sub-group sample is not anticipated to be benchmarked to the 2010 Census short form for cities and smaller areas, but instead to total population estimates at the county level. This will create large differences in basic count 2010 ACS estimates and the 100% 2010 Census counts for cities and sub-areas, and for all sub-groups (ethnic, age...) within the county.
Survey Methods:
- Mail: Self-enumeration
- Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), approximately 3 weeks after the mailout
- Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) by Census Bureau field representatives.
Opposition
The surveys asks for more information, and at a higher frequency of polling, than the simple enumeration required by the U.S. Constitution Article I Section 2. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who opposes the ACS, said of it that the Founding Fathers of the United States "never authorized the federal government to continuously survey the American people. More importantly, they never envisioned a nation where the people would roll over and submit to every government demand."[1]
Footnotes
See also
- Survey of Income and Program Participation
- Current Population Survey
- Privacy laws of the United States
External links
- American Community Survey site at the United States Census Bureau
- ACS data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series
- American FactFinder - United States Census Bureau's Searchable Database
- Access to all survey questionnaires used from 1996 to 2005
- American Community Survey (ACS) User Guide for Disability Statistics
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