Pre-Census Warning. Why?
March 9, 2010 8:07 PM   Subscribe

Why does the Census send out a letter saying they will send me the Census form in one week instead of just sending me the form directly?

I tried searching, but I could only find references to that GOP fund raising scheme and some people complaining "yay our tax dollars at work. I'm sure there's a reason for this.
posted by Green With You to Law & Government (20 answers total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Heads up so you are less likely to throw it out.
posted by desjardins at 8:09 PM on March 9, 2010


Better response rate, I imagine. (I thought it was kind of weird, too).
posted by fieldtrip at 8:10 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]


Best answer: This exact question came up on Reddit yesterday, and received the following answer:
I work for the census. I work for them because millions of people don't send the form back. They are trying everyway possible to decrease the number of non-responses, and this puts it in people's mind that the Census is coming. Also, cost-wise, this is much cheaper than hiring thousands more workers for door to door visits. (lastly, they may be getting free postage)
posted by teraflop at 8:10 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]


In case you missed the ads on tv or the billboards telling you there was a census coming.

(We got the same letter today too, does seem kind of silly)
posted by reptile at 8:10 PM on March 9, 2010


Best answer: Article on improving response rates
posted by desjardins at 8:11 PM on March 9, 2010


it's harder to get people to do the census than it is to get them to vote. it's part of the PR moves to convince people that it's important. this year it's probably more needed than ever because there's a backlash from the privileged side about being counted or herded or goose stepping or something. on the other side, there are a lot of gay families wanting to make themselves known, and being officially counted is a way to achieve that. so, honestly i hope the people on the right and the left get what they want - skew the numbers in a favorable way, for once.
posted by nadawi at 8:11 PM on March 9, 2010 [3 favorites]


I think that it causes people to have conversations about the census with their friends, so that the final form is not just ignored as another piece of junk mail.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:12 PM on March 9, 2010


If a mass-mailing in advance gets, say, 100 more responses back, that's 100 more people that won't have to be visited by a census worker.

I understand that we are all "GRAR! SAVE THE TREES! SAVE THE BUDGET!" but on the scale of 1 to Useless, this mailing is only ranked "useless" by people who already know about the Census. IE, us.
posted by muddgirl at 8:13 PM on March 9, 2010


Seconding Mudgirl and Teraflop, and East Manitoba...

It's a regular rule in survey design that sending a primer letter improves response rates by something like 50-75%.

The Census Bureau always sends pre-response letters for all of its surveys.
posted by stratastar at 8:16 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]


Basically what everyone else is saying.

When doing survey research of any type, you're more likely to get responses if you send out a letter/email saying that a survey is coming for the reasons listed above. I'm in the process of drafting something very much like this for a music ed survey I'm doing amongst high school kids.
posted by SNWidget at 8:17 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]


Best answer: here is the canned response from the census bureau, passed along by reason's hit & run blog:
Thank you for your email. We here at the Census Bureau certainly understand your concern, and I want to assure you we care a great deal about being good stewards of the taxpayer's money....

Based on historical response rates, we expect roughly two thirds of households will mail back their form. The rest we will have to send an enumerator to collect the data required by the Constitution. You can imagine that follow-up is an expensive proposition. In fact, every one percent increase in the number of households who mail back the form saves the taxpayers about $85 million in expensive door-to-door follow up. That's why we advertise and promote, to increase the mail back response rate and help save on expensive labor to follow up.

We have extensive research that shows additional mailings alerting households to the arrival of the census form increase response rates by about 6 to 12 percentage points. The savings from that increase more than pay for these mailings. It costs about $85 million to print and mail the advance letter and reminder postcard. The potential increase in response rates demonstrated by our research could result in a savings of more than $500 million....

The total we spend on all promotion and advertising is about one dollar per person in the U.S. It costs just 42 cents to mail back the form. But it costs $57 for follow up with non-responding households, many of which we must visit several times to reach someone at home....

We appreciate your civic minded spirit, and your concern for our current fiscal situation. I hope this information helps explain the steps we are taking to reduce the burden on taxpayers of meeting our Constitutional mandate to count every person in the country.
posted by jimw at 8:22 PM on March 9, 2010 [12 favorites]


The census now has a blog that answers questions like this. There's a whole section covering the communications campaign.
posted by donajo at 8:32 PM on March 9, 2010


And here's the Census blog's explanation.

I don't work for the Census, but my job requires that I spend lots of time thinking about and reading studies on getting people to respond to civic-engagement-type requests, and I definitely believe the studies showing that it improves response rates.

Honestly, for people to knee-jerk assume it's wasteful is a bit silly. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get people to respond to anything?
posted by lunasol at 8:40 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]


I got a fortune cookie with my take-out last week that had a note about the census on the back of the fortune!
posted by TochterAusElysium at 10:14 PM on March 9, 2010


In situations like these you have to remember the average American requires tons of hand holding and reminding and I'm sure by the next census will only fill out the form if there's $10 attached to it and another $10 promised if you actually send it in. Haven't seen the letter yet, but I do think the commercials have been funny though, so at least I'm entertained with my tax dollars.
posted by thorny at 10:41 PM on March 9, 2010


Response by poster: Ugh. I made the mistake of reading the responses to that Census blog post. Big mistake. It was almost as bad as Youtube!

Thank you for your responses, I will use them for the inevitable crap I expect my acquaintances to spew on Facebook.
posted by Green With You at 12:02 AM on March 10, 2010


I got one in the mail today and was wondering why they sent it to me when I already filled out the long form census a couple months ago. I get another one now?
posted by Jawn at 1:40 AM on March 10, 2010


I would guess that the "controversy" over this mailing also has some effect on response rates by further getting the word out about the census.
posted by Xalf at 7:40 AM on March 10, 2010


The pre-survey letter isn't going out to every single home - only about 15 million or so. The actual mailing (starting next week) will cover approximately 123 million households. There will be a set of reminder postcards (another 15 million, IIRC) that will be mailed out in late March/early April for those who haven't sent in their census forms.

[Disclaimer: I work for the USPS, and this is by far the biggest mailing we've ever done - around 200 million pieces altogether].
posted by Telpethoron at 8:12 AM on March 10, 2010


I work for the census. The enumerators that have to go door-to-door when people don't return their census are making a fair bit of money ($18.75/hour in NYC). They are paid for travel time as well. Even though they only work in their zip code, they still have to get to the housing unit, gain entry (or not), follow a prescribed set of instructions for taking down information, double-check that information, and then move on to the next house. The census wants to reduce the amount of nonresponses.

There are a ton of efforts that have been going on for months to make sure that everyone is counted. It's an outreach effort close enough to the census mailing date so that people don't see the envelope next week and throw out the whole thing without opening it, assuming it's junk mail.
posted by amicamentis at 10:03 AM on March 10, 2010


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