Methodological Research

Senior research staff answers questions from readers relating to all the areas covered by our seven projects ranging from polling techniques and findings, to media, technology, religious, demographic and global attitudes trends.

New York City filed its official challenge to 2010 Census results today, stating that the count missed at least 50,000 people, in large part because occupied units were erroneously termed vacant.

A new Population Reference Bureau report summarizes key findings from the first wave of Census 2010 data, including trends in the population of children, as well as race and ethnic groups. The Brookings Institution recently published reports using 2010 Census data to discuss aging and race and ethnic change.

A growing number of organizations (including the Census Bureau) are producing census-based interactive maps that allow users to choose the level of geography, topic or time period they want to display. This All Things Census posting includes links to maps using data from the 2010 Census, as well as earlier census data.

This All Things Census posting announces a new Pew Research Center report using census data to explore the economics of cohabitation, which uses census data to compare the financial well-being of adults who are married, living with an unmarried opposite-sex partner, or not living with such a partner or spouse. The Census Bureau is releasing detailed local-level counts of unmarried couples over the summer.

The ongoing release of so-called SF1 data from the 2010 Census--detailed local-level tabulations about age, families, housing and other topics--has produced a wave of news stories about the changing family. Stories from newspapers in California and Pennsylvania focus especially on same-sex couples.

New data from the 2010 Census was released today by the Census Bureau, filling in details about age, household type, homeownership and more.

As numbers continue to pour out of the 2010 Census, the National Research Council recently made a number of recommendations about how to improve the next national count, in 2020.

The Census Bureau is releasing demographic profiles from the 2010 Census this month, and here is a look at the first round of news stories from the data, which focused on young people, older Americans, the national origin of Hispanics and changes in household size.

When census-takers can’t reach anyone at a particular address or obtain information about occupants in other ways, they sometimes use a last-resort statistical technique called “imputation” to fill in missing data.