Big Survey Meets Big Data: Implementing Administrative Records on the American Community Survey

Jennifer M. Ortman , U.S. Census Bureau
Sandra L. Clark, U.S. Census Bureau
Nikolas D. Pharris-Ciurej, U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau has made significant progress exploring the use of administrative records in the American Community Survey (ACS) to continue to meet data needs in an era of limited budgets, rising costs and decreasing participation. Incorporating administrative records into our processes should positively impact respondent burden and data reliability, while saving costs by, for example, reducing the need for follow up visits. There is great potential for administrative record utilization in data collection and processing, but there are also great challenges. These include matching accuracy, geographic coverage, and a mismatch between administrative concepts and statistical requirements. This paper details the vision of how administrative data will be integrated into the ACS, including an evaluation of alternative administrative data sets, a case study on the use of administrative data to replace ACS housing items, and the use of administrative data for editing and imputation on the ACS.

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 Presented in Session 3. Population, Development, & the Environment; Data & Methods; Applied Demography