This paper gives an insider's perspective on the management approaches used to manage the 2010 Census during its operational phase. The approaches used, the challenges faced (in particular, difficulties faced in automating data collection), and the solutions applied to meet those challenges are described. Finally, six management lessons learned are presented.
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Lessons for Targeted Program Evaluation: A Personal and Professional History of the Survey of Program Dynamics
August 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-24
The Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) was created by the 1996 welfare reform legislation to facilitate its evaluation. This paper describes the evolution of that survey, discusses its implementation, and draws lessons for future evaluation. Large-scale surveys can be an important part of a portfolio of evaluation methods, but sufficient time must be given to data collection agencies if a high-quality longitudinal survey is expected. Such a survey must have both internal (agency) and external (policy analyst) buy-in. Investments in data analysis by agency staff, downplayed in favor of larger sample sizes given a fixed budget, could have contributed to more external acceptance. More attention up-front to reducing the potentially deleterious effects of attrition in longitudinal surveys, such as through the use of monetary incentives, might have been worthwhile. Given the problems encountered by the Census Bureau in producing the SPD, I argue that ongoing multi-purpose longitudinal surveys like the Survey of Income and Program Participation are potentially more valuable than episodic special-purpose surveys.
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2010 American Community Survey Match Study
July 2014
Working Paper Number:
carra-2014-03
Using administrative records data from federal government agencies and commercial sources, the 2010 ACS Match Study measures administrative records coverage of 2010 ACS addresses, persons, and persons at addresses at different levels of geography as well as by demographic characteristics and response mode. The 2010 ACS Match Study represents a continuation of the research undertaken in the 2010 Census Match Study, the first national-level evaluation of administrative records data coverage. Preliminary results indicate that administrative records provide substantial coverage for addresses and persons in the 2010 ACS (92.7 and 92.1 percent respectively), and less extensive though substantial coverage, for person-address pairs (74.3 percent). In addition, some variation in address, person and/or person-address coverage is found across demographic and response mode groups. This research informs future uses of administrative records in survey and decennial census operations to address the increasing costs of data collection and declining response rates.
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Developing Content for the
Management and Organizational Practices Survey-Hospitals (MOPS-HP)
September 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-25
Nationally representative U.S. hospital data does not exist on management practices, which have been shown to be related to both clinical and financial performance using past data collected in the World Management Survey (WMS). This paper describes the U.S. Census Bureau's development of content for the Management and Organizational Practices Survey Hospitals (MOPS-HP) that is similar to data collected in the MOPS conducted for the manufacturing sector in 2010 and 2015 and the 2009 WMS. Findings from cognitive testing interviews with 18 chief nursing officers and 13 chief financial officers at 30 different hospitals across 7 states and the District of Columbia led to using industry-tested terminology, to confirming chief nursing officers as MOPS-HP respondents and their ability to provide recall data, and to eliminating questions that tested poorly. Hospital data collected in the MOPS-HP would be the first nationally representative data on management practices with queries on clinical key performance indicators, financial and hospital-wide patient care goals, addressing patient care problems, clinical team interactions and staffing, standardized clinical protocols, and incentives for medical record documentation. The MOPS-HP's purpose is not to collect COVID-19 pandemic information; however, data measuring hospital management practices prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic are a byproduct of the survey's one-year recall period (2019 and 2020).
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The Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS): Cognitive Testing*
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-53
All Census Bureau surveys must meet quality standards before they can be sent to the public for data collection. This paper outlines the pretesting process that was used to ensure that the Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS) met those standards. The MOPS is the first large survey of management practices at U.S. manufacturing establishments. The first wave of the MOPS, issued for reference year 2010, was subject to internal expert review and two rounds of cognitive interviews. The results of this pretesting were used to make significant changes to the MOPS instrument and ensure that quality data was collected. The second wave of the MOPS, featuring new questions on data in decision making (DDD) and uncertainty and issued for reference year 2015, was subject to two rounds of cognitive interviews and a round of usability testing. This paper illustrates the effort undertaken by the Census Bureau to ensure that all surveys released into the field are of high quality and provides insight into how respondents interpret the MOPS questionnaire for those looking to utilize the MOPS data.
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The Impact of Household Surveys on 2020 Census Self-Response
July 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-24
Households who were sampled in 2019 for the American Community Survey (ACS) had lower self-response rates to the 2020 Census. The magnitude varied from -1.5 percentage point for household sampled in January 2019 to -15.1 percent point for households sampled in December 2019. Similar effects are found for the Current Population Survey (CPS) as well.
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Some Open Questions on Multiple-Source Extensions of Adaptive-Survey Design Concepts and Methods
February 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-03
Adaptive survey design is a framework for making data-driven decisions about survey data collection operations. This paper discusses open questions related to the extension of adaptive principles and capabilities when capturing data from multiple data sources. Here, the concept of 'design' encompasses the focused allocation of resources required for the production of high-quality statistical information in a sustainable and cost-effective way. This conceptual framework leads to a discussion of six groups of issues including: (i) the goals for improvement through adaptation; (ii) the design features that are available for adaptation; (iii) the auxiliary data that may be available for informing adaptation; (iv) the decision rules that could guide adaptation; (v) the necessary systems to operationalize adaptation; and (vi) the quality, cost, and risk profiles of the proposed adaptations (and how to evaluate them). A multiple data source environment creates significant opportunities, but also introduces complexities that are a challenge in the production of high-quality statistical information.
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Measuring the Impact of COVID-19 on Businesses and People: Lessons from the Census Bureau's Experience
January 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-02
We provide an overview of Census Bureau activities to enhance the consistency, timeliness, and relevance of our data products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight new data products designed to provide timely and granular information on the pandemic's impact: the Small Business Pulse Survey, weekly Business Formation Statistics, the Household Pulse Survey, and Community Resilience Estimates. We describe pandemic-related content introduced to existing surveys such as the Annual Business Survey and the Current Population Survey. We discuss adaptations to ensure the continuity and consistency of existing data products such as principal economic indicators and the American Community Survey.
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Evaluation of Commercial School and Teacher Lists to Enhance Survey Frames
July 2014
Working Paper Number:
carra-2014-07
This report summarizes the potential for teacher lists obtained from commercial vendors for enhancing sampling frames for the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). We investigate three separate vendor lists, and compare coverage rates across a range of school and teacher characteristics. Across all vendors, coverage rates are higher for regular, non-charter schools. Vendor A stands out as having higher coverage rates than the other two, and we recommend further evaluating Vendor A's teacher lists during the upcoming 2014-2015 NTPS Field Test.
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Analytic Use Of Economic Microdata; A Model For Researcher Access With Confidentiality Protection
August 1992
Working Paper Number:
CES-92-08
A primary responsibility of the Center for Economic Studies (CES) of the U.S. Bureau of the Census is to facilitate researcher access to confidential economic microdata files. Benefits from this program accrue not only to policy makers--there is a growing awareness of the importance of microdata for analyzing both the descriptive and welfare implications of regulatory and environmental changes--but also and importantly to the statistical agencies themselves. In fact, there is substantial recent literature arguing for the proposition that the largest single improvement that the U.S. statistical system could make is to improve its analytic capabilities. In this paper I briefly discuss these benefits to greater access for analytical work and ways to achieve them. Due to the nature of business data, public use databases and masking technologies are not available as vehicles for releasing useful microdata files. I conclude that a combination of outside and inside research programs, carefully coordinated and integrated is the best model for ensuring that statistical agencies reap the gains from analytic data users. For the United States, at least, this is fortuitous with respect to justifying access since any direct research with confidential data by outsiders must have a "statistical purpose". Until the advent of CES, it was virtually impossible for researchers to work with the economic microdata collected by the various economic censuses. While the CES program is quite large, as it now stands, researchers, or their representatives, must come to the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. to access the data. The success of the program has led to increasing demands for data access in facilities outside of the Washington, D.C. area. Two options are considered: 1) Establish Census Bureau facilities in various universities or similar nonprofit research facilities and 2) Develop CES regional operations in existing Census Bureau regional offices.
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Tapping Business and Household Surveys to Sharpen Our View of Work from Home
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-36
Timely business-level measures of work from home (WFH) are scarce for the U.S. economy. We review prior survey-based efforts to quantify the incidence and character of WFH and describe new questions that we developed and fielded for the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS). Drawing on more than 150,000 firm-level responses to the BTOS, we obtain four main findings. First, nearly a third of businesses have employees who work from home, with tremendous variation across sectors. The share of businesses with WFH employees is nearly ten times larger in the Information sector than in Accommodation and Food Services. Second, employees work from home about 1 day per week, on average, and businesses expect similar WFH levels in five years. Third, feasibility aside, businesses' largest concern with WFH relates to productivity. Seven percent of businesses find that onsite work is more productive, while two percent find that WFH is more productive. Fourth, there is a low level of tracking and monitoring of WFH activities, with 70% of firms reporting they do not track employee days in the office and 75% reporting they do not monitor employees when they work from home. These lessons serve as a starting point for enhancing WFH-related content in the American Community Survey and other household surveys.
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