Experimentation and Evaluation Plans for the 2010 Census: Interim Report

For the past 50 years, the Census Bureau has conducted experiments and evaluations with every decennial census involving field data collection during which alternatives to current census processes are assessed for a subset of the population. An "evaluation" is usually a post hoc analysis of data collected as part of the decennial census processing to determine whether individual steps in the census operated as expected. The 2010 Program for Evaluations and Experiments, known as CPEX, has enormous potential to reduce costs and increase effectiveness of the 2020 census by reducing the initial list of potential research topics from 52 to 6. The panel identified three priority experiments for inclusion in the 2010 census to assist 2020 census (1) an experiment on the use of the Internet for data collection; (2) an experiment on the use of administrative records for various census purposes; and (3) an experiment (or set of experiments) on features of the census questionnaire. They also came up with 11 recommendations to improve efficiency and quality of data collection including allowing use of the Internet for data submission and including one or more alternate questionnaire experiments to examine things such as the representation of race and ethnicity.