8 Monday, July 19, 2010 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Census di rector discusses work Former 'U' researcher es, 150,000 bureau employees walked every street in the country to deter- presents update on mine which addresses to either add to or eliminate from the list, according to status of 2010 Census Groves. Once the list of addresses was By HILLARY BOK revised, Groves said the next step was Daily StaffReporter to send out questionnaires in the mail. Groves emphasized the nature of Robert Groves, director of the U.S. the information collected through the Census Bureau, addressed community questionnaires. members Friday morning at the Uni- "We are attempting to count the versity Museum of Modern Art con- population as it existed on Apr. 1, 2010," cerning strategies the bureau is taking Groves said. "With each passing day, to increase the accuracy of the 2010 that becomes more difficult, because Census. you have to reconstruct who was alive Groves, a former survey researcher and who was not alive on Apr. 1." for the University, explained the pro- Advertising was a major part of rais- cess of collecting data for the census ing awareness of the Census, according and the goals for this year's final result, to Groves. He explained that adver- including the Dec. 31 deadline. tising had to target everyone in the Groves said the process of informa- country and not just any one group. He tion collection for the Census begins estimated $150 million was spent on with a "gigantic list of addresses," advertising for the 2010 Census alone. which was compiled during the spring "It was a consortium of many adver- and summer of last year. tising firms," he said. "Many of them Equipped with handheld GPS devic- targeted certain ethnic, subcultural or language groups led by people from that community. The advertising was disproportionately local this time, as opposed to national." For example, Groves said that to reinforce the importance of counting each and every person in the house- hold, the Los Angeles Regional Office distributed onesies for babies that said, "I'm here. I should be counted." Advertisements for the 2010 Census appeared in a wide variety of languag- es in an attempt to make more people aware of the process and the dead- lines to decrease the number of non- responses. Another way that the Census Bureau attempted to reduce the number of non-responses was by mailing out replacement forms. "Survey researchers have known for maybe 40 years that if you send a replacement form, that raises the response rate. The 2010 Census for the first time has that feature," Groves said. Based on preliminary results, Groves said he has noticed the positive effect of the replacement forms in the response rates. He also noted something inter- esting about the response rates. "A surprise to meas a social scientist, was thatifyoubuild apredictive model, you can drive the race and ethnicity coefficient almost to zero if you put in socioeconomic indicators," Groves said. "This is a much bigger correlate than race and ethnicity. I'm not sure we have addressed that as a country as much as we've addressed the variation in race and ethnicity." But there is always some data that will simply not be returned to the bureau. Groves said one of his favorite stories from the 2010 Census collection came from the Detroit Regional Office. Groves said an employee working for census collection ventured to the Upper Peninsula to deliver a question- naire to an isolated cabin. After hik- ing for more than a mile, the employee came upon the cabin to find the 2000 Census, still attached to the doorknob. "You cannot be cost efficient in a census," Groves laughed about the story. Despite the efforts of the Census Bureau so far, Groves said the numbers collected at this point are still only pre- liminary. "The revisions of these numbers will continue throughout the fall. I believe strongly that one building block of the credibility of census is for us to be transparent. You are going to see all these numbers," he said. The deadline for the 2010 Census is December 31. By this date the Census Bureau must submit the population counts on a state level to the President so that the number of seats inthe House of Representatives to be reapportioned accordingly. WRITE FOR THE DAILY. E-mail alapin@umich.edu for details. CORRECTIONS * A July 12 article in the print edition of The Michigan Daily ("Hanlon gets 64-percent salary raise") accidentally omitted that Hanlon's contract was executed on Feb.25 and that the contract was not previously released to The Michigan Dailybecause of an internal communication misunderstanding at the Univer- sity. An earlier version of this story also inaccurately reported that Hanlon would receive his deferred compensation of $75,000 every year through 2014. He is only receiving his deferred compensation in 2010. " A July 12 article in the print edition of The Michigan Daily ("LSA Building initiates 'U' smoke-free policy") inaccu- rately identified the University Health Service as the University of Michigan Health System. " Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@ michigandaily.com. 0 I I Felix Mendelssohn's 1E 1.dI H l Tuesday, July 27, 2010 Hill Auditorium Blue Lake International Choir Alumni Choir and Youth Symphony Mon, July 26 Blue Lake International Choir Works by Bach, Bruckner, and Bernstein Wed, July 28 Blue Lake International Youth Symphony Shostakovich No.5 r Blue Lake Student Art Exhibition July 13- August 18 Art Lounge MICHIGAN UNION All Concerts Begin at 7:30 p.m. More information at bluelake.org/ebi 1 E R a i!. n x a a < r a. fl f is F n: x . a .,. a: a . . _ .. _ ..