The 2010 Census

A new decade is upon us and at an estimated cost of $14.5 billion dollars and being promoted as " The Portrait of America" the new 2010 Census will be conducted .Recently there has been many stories written that reflect how the 2010 Census will actually be conducted. The 2010 Census plan is if a household doesn’t mail back the questionnaire by the third week of April 2010, a trained Census Bureau enumerator will visit the household, starting in May 2010. Enumerators will try six times if necessary to reach a knowledgeable household member, visiting housing units multiple days at different hours. When the enumerator makes contact, he or she will collect the census data by interview. If enumerators can’t contact a household, they will seek information in any way possible to "estimate" the number of people in the household. At the end of this process, every household will have some information about its occupants recorded. "Estimate" is the key word here, just how accurate will the estimated information be. Will the enumerators estimate the households ethnicity, race and language preference. Language Preference is not even one of the 10 questions on the short form.. In 2000 only about 70 percent of the population returned their information, leaving several areas seriously under-counted and under-represented. It should be interesting to compare their estimated number to those of companies who use real time data in their analysis.. More to come as we learn more.