by Jose Alvarado Vega

PR DAILY SUN

U.S. Census Bureau officials said Monday that island residents will be receiving a simplified questionnaire for the 2010 Census in the next few weeks, as the agency launches an islandwide road tour calling on them to mail the forms back and encouraging hard-to-reach groups to participate.

The same questionnaire is used in Puerto Rico as in the states.

“We expect that with the shorter questionnaire for the 2010 Census, the proportion of people answering it will be greater [than in 2000],” Marilia Matos, U.S. Census director of field operations, said of the 10-question form that will focus on demographic information such as the make-up of families and their ages, race and ethnic group.

Matos said the agency simplified the questionnaire, which she noted is “one of the shortest in the history of the United States,” because the agency found that people filling out the longer questionnaires in past censuses returned them less often. She said the new questionnaire can be answered in no more than 10 minutes.

“Our objective is to increase the response rate of the questionnaire by mail, therefore decreasing the costs related to sending our enumerators to the addresses that didn’t complete and mail back the form”, Matos said during a press conference at the entrance to El Morro Fortress in Old San Juan, where agency officials announced that a U.S. Census van will travel the island on a 51-day “Portrait of Puerto Rico” road tour in which Census employees will visit 30 municipalities to explain the importance of a complete count to the public.

The van, one of 13 to be deployed throughout the U.S., will visit events such as fairs, sporting events, concerts and community activities. It will also reach groups that “don’t want to be counted,” including isolated neighborhoods and areas with a suspected high number of undocumented immigrants.

“It’s important that everyone in each household is counted, including babies, who usually get left out, according to studies we have done,” she said, noting that the new questionnaire has space for 12 people. Relatives who live most of the time in a household must be counted as a part of that household, she said.

Matos noted that Census data is used to determine the allotment of federal funds for infrastructure and services, such as roads, hospitals, schools, daycare centers, senior centers and emergency care. It will also be used to determine the redistribution of electoral districts for the 2012 elections.

Fabián Sánchez, U.S. Census area manager, said residents should not fear that the information on questionnaires will be used by other federal agencies or be divulged to third parties because federal law bans the use of such data for purposes other than the Census.

He said the aim is to have local residents mail in between 80 percent and 90 percent of questionnaires, compared to the 53 percent returned through the mail in the 2000 census. Some 73 percent of U.S. residents returned their questionnaires through the mail in 2000, he said.

Family heads should fill out the questionnaires and mail them in by the end of April. Between May and June, Census employees will visit families who did not mail in their questionnaires.

Matos said that since 2005 the monthly Puerto Rico Community Survey, a local version of a similar U.S. survey, has been collecting the socio-economic information no longer asked for in the Census questionnaire. She said the survey was designed so that each island family gets a questionnaire at least once every 10 years. Survey information is published every three years.

She said the survey was created to provide municipalities and businesses with more detailed and updated information for such tasks as providing services and determining where to open up stores.

Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock said during the activity that “tens of thousands” of people are not counted by the census on the island as well as on the U.S. mainland. He said that Hispanics fall disproportionately into this group.

McClintock called on Puerto Ricans on the island and on the U.S. mainland to fill out and promptly mail in the questionnaires. He also called on the U.S. Census Bureau to stop “undercounting the Americans on the island,” in reference to the fact that the island’s 4 million people are not counted as part of the U.S. total, which is estimated at 308 million.

“We are boricuas and Americans, pa’ que tú lo sepas,” he said, while calling on Puerto Ricans to fill in the corresponding ethnic classification on the questionnaire.

Boston Regional Census Director Kathleen Ludgate, who oversees Census efforts on the island and in seven northeastern states covering 9 million households, said the total U.S. population excludes the Puerto Rico count because the state count is used for electoral redistribution of U.S. House seats.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 9:56 am and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.