396 – Results from the 2010 Census Experimental Program
2010 Census Race and Hispanic Origin Alternative Questionnaire Experiment Summary
Michael Bentley
U.S. Census Bureau
Elizabeth Compton
U.S. Census Bureau
The primary component of the 2010 Census Alternative Questionnaire Experiment was an ambitious series of 15 experimental panels devoted to race and Hispanic origin research. The main goals were to design and test questionnaire strategies that would increase reporting in the major race and ethnic categories and elicit reporting of detailed race and ethnic groups, lower item non-response, and increase accuracy and reliability of the results. The research questions are divided into three sets of panels: (1) examining modified race and Hispanic origin examples; (2) combining the separate race and Hispanic origin questions into one; and (3) testing the use of a spanner and the limiting of the term ‘race.’ The second major component of the study was a phone reinterview conducted a few months after the 2010 Census mailout. The reinterview was designed to probe more extensively into the racial and ethnic background of respondents by asking a series of questions about how they self-identified, as well as collecting more detailed information about their racial and ethnic background. This paper presents the key findings of the research.
