By embracing the web, the US Census Bureau hopes to achieve cost savings and improved response rates. On the first count, it might succeed -- eventually. As for the second, keep your fingers crossed.
Beginning in 2014, the US Census Bureau will permit limited opportunities to respond to questions online.
The impetus for seeking savings is clear. The gargantuan paper chase cost an astonishing $42 per capita in 2010, a total of $13 billion. Finland, abandoning the door-to-door method of counting heads, has seen savings of 90 percent.
The digital dabbling will begin with an experimental sample, namely the 3.5 million households randomly selected to take part in the American Community Survey. While it's a good idea to test a system like this in a limited field trial before adopting it for the main census, the experiment is a tentative one.
While completing the survey is mandatory for the households selected, not everyone will push it to the top of their to-do list. Since the Bureau intends to send out paper surveys to any households that do not respond online within two weeks, many respondents may end up filling in a paper form anyway.
The hope that going digital will increase the appeal of the ACS, or the main survey, to groups that respond poorly is surely much less firmly grounded than the expectation of cost savings. Many households attempt to evade the census, not because it's "old media," but because they are concerned about revealing personal information, or they can't be bothered.
The last thing likely to appeal to those who prefer to stay in the shadows is the digitalization of their information. Although legal restrictions prohibit the Bureau from sharing information, the self-selected sub-group of census evaders may be the most likely to fear data-sharing with the INS, IRS, or other authorities.
As for those who simply find the census a bore, putting it online to compete with Angry Birds, Facebook, and "Gangnam Style" may not be enough. Maybe it needs to be gamified, or be teamed with special offers.
Still, we shouldn't be too cynically dismissive of what seems to be a step in the right -- anti-bureaucratic -- direction.
They should start it with a city or may be half, randomly selecting 3.5 million households will be difficult to manage and it may not only increase the cost of the testing but also decrease the chances of success.
With surveying you need the random element to avoid bias. Regional bias, demographic bias etc can all essentially ruin your survey results. For example I am working with results of an online survey that takes 10+ minutes to complete online. We don't get a representative sample - we get more retired folks who are less time sensitive and more Internet savvy folks but not a pure sample of the customer base.
Interesting points on Finland moving the census online. I wonder (I see some googling ahead) how they are dealing with identifying individuals and households and avoiding all the opportunities for fraud and miscounting. Counting the homeless in the US census has been an issue and one that online surveys cold only make worse.
Considering how many governments (including the US Government via the FTC) and people have sued or are suing or are investigating Facebook, I can only imagine the lawsuits that would follow any use of Facebook in an election process.
Thinking back to 2000 and the hanging chad debacle in Florida and the number of lawsuits - making it all the way to the Supreme Court it seems like have Facebook in the election process could singlehandly eliminate unemployment - at least for lawyers ;-)
Why not ? I think many have tried it so why not the census dept. It will be really easy for them if they use it properly. For that you need to feed the initial set of data properly. If not everything will be wrong.
I agree with nimantha. Though we have to do a lot of work before implementing this social media tool and I also agree that this whole process will not prove to be a child's play but still we have to keep our spirits high and I believe that US Census should try out this "newfangled social media thing" as it will definitely gonna work if properly functioned.
Nasimson: If its been given strict and proper regulations on what needs to be a professional social media to accept professional body inputs things will work fine definitely. There will be enough traffic for sure. Its just a matter of proper co-ordination is required.
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