WASHINGTON
(AP) -- For the first time, the Census Bureau is giving U.S. households a
chance to respond to government surveys over the Internet, part of a
bid to save costs and boost sagging response rates in a digital age.
The
new online option will supplement the traditional census mail-out
operation. It is a major shift for the agency, which has relied almost
exclusively on paper forms since 1970 but is now moving toward a more
Internet-based system after spending a record $13 billion on the 2010
census.
"The online response option is part of
an ongoing digital transformation at the Census Bureau," said Thomas
Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau's acting director. "The Census Bureau is
transforming to make responding to surveys more convenient, conducting
surveys more cost-effective and America's statistics more accessible on
digital and mobile devices."
Beginning this
week, more than 3.5 million U.S. households that are randomly selected
each year to participate in the American Community Survey will be sent
letters asking them to respond online. The ACS questionnaire, formerly
known as the census "long form," asks households for wide-ranging
details from education and income to disabilities, language use and
commute times.
The Census Bureau also will add
a new series of questions on computer and Internet usage to the survey,
with data gathered becoming available beginning in 2014.
If
households don't respond within two weeks, the Census Bureau will send
out copies of paper surveys and follow up with interviews by phone or in
person.
The Census Bureau said it is hoping
to tap into the changing information habits of Americans, especially
younger adults, who are increasingly turning to computers, tablets and
smartphones for their communications. Over the last two censuses, the
government has struggled with decreasing response rates, due to a
combination of perceived inconvenience and concerns about revealing
personal information in surveys.
Perhaps
equally important, the Census Bureau believes higher response rates
could eventually reduce costs, mainly by decreasing the need to mail out
voluminous forms or dispatch hundreds of thousands of survey-takers
each month to individual homes. At least initially, officials estimate
the switch could shave $3 million off the price of conducting the
American Community Survey, which cost taxpayers roughly $250 million in
2012.
The American Community Survey is used to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds for hospitals, roads and schools.
The
ACS surveys being distributed this week mark the first time the
government will offer an Internet option on such a wide scale to U.S.
households, according to Frank Vitrano, the Census Bureau's associate
director for the 2020 census. He said it currently offers the option in
smaller surveys for more niche audiences, such as businesses. An
Internet option also previously was provided on a limited basis in 2000,
but only a small fraction of households participated. By 2010, census
officials had backed away from an Internet-based survey, citing concerns
of hacking and other security breaches.
Since
then, countries such as Canada and South Korea have moved to make the
Internet a regular part of their census operations. In more recent U.S.
tests, about 50 percent of households responded when allowed to respond
via the Internet, census officials said. The Census Bureau also has
taken additional steps to boost digital security, requiring users to
enter a randomly generated user ID to enter the survey site.
The
Census Bureau for years has been urged by members of Congress to move
to an Internet-based system, partly to help cut costs. But concerns
remain as it is studied for use in the 2020 census, which counts the
entire U.S. population rather than a representative sample. The
once-a-decade count has traditionally missed hard-to-track groups such
as minorities, the homeless and the poor, who also may be less likely to
have access to computers.
Recent government
tests have shown that U.S. residents who are more likely to respond to
surveys online are younger, Asian, non-black, or "other" race, with
higher education. Those living in larger households as well as those who
speak a language other than English at home also were more likely to
fill out Internet forms.
Reaching
hard-to-count groups has been a major factor behind ballooning costs to
the census, which sustains its biggest costs when it has to send
survey-takers to households.
"An Internet
option cannot come at the expense of reaching hard-to-count communities.
Because of disparities in Internet access, this is no silver bullet to
increasing response rates and could make racial and language minorities,
as well as rural residents, even harder to count than they are now,"
said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on
Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of various civil rights groups.
"The
bureau cannot use this as an excuse to scale back the field offices and
programs that ensure everyone gets counted, regardless of race,
language, or ZIP code," he said.
Census
officials say planning for the 2020 census is under way, and that money
saved by implementing an Internet option could possibly be used to pay
for additional efforts to track hard-to-count groups.
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
