Right now the Census questions on race and ethnicity may well be the most thoroughly tested and validated survey questions ever on the planet. The race question is very odd. The question groupings and listed categories are very odd. And the required open-end is bound to get a bunch of garbage. How on earth will they analyze the open-ends and find meaningful, quantifiable data?
Moreover, I agree that the new race and ethnicity questions are not ideal. But wait. It turns out the researchers at the U. They know tons more about how to ask these questions than any online critics in the market research industry.
In fact, they spent over ten years and millions of dollars testing their questions. The Census Bureau conducted the largest quantitative effort ever on how people identify their race and ethnicity.
Way back in the Bureau conducted an experiment to begin preparing for the Census. Then they called over 60, of those households to re-interview them by telephone. In addition, they conducted 67 focus groups across the United States and in Puerto Rico with nearly people. A detailed report of their methods and findings are available in a page report. Even before that effort, the Bureau conducted one-on-one cognitive interviewing to test for misunderstandings or misinterpretations of the wording.
Here is what that involved:. The protocol for the cognitive interviews combined verbal think-aloud reports with retrospective probes and debriefing. Each cognitive interview involved two interviewers working together, face-to-face with the respondent.
One interviewer read the RI questionnaire as if he or she was conducting the actual phone interview. Meanwhile, another interviewer observed the interview, took notes, and later asked cognitive interview and retrospective debriefing questions after the RI questionnaire was complete. The debriefing probes were semi-scripted, allowing the interviewer to probe on things that occurred spontaneously while also covering a set of required material.
Then in the Bureau launched another round of research. They tested question format one question vs. They sampled and mailed to over 1 million households, and selected about , of those households for follow-up phone interviews. You can read about their methods and findings for this phase of research in a page report. It is true that the current ethnicity and race questions are not ideal see the next section for why.
Today, minorities, as well as nonminorities, are distrustful of the uses to which census data might be put, despite repeated assurances from the Census Bureau that all responses are strictly confidential. Japanese further fuels distrust among minorities, which is clearly one reason why disproportionate numbers of them do not get counted in the first place. The bureau is in an awkward position when justifying its gathering of racial and ethnic data.
One possible rationale is that such information has always been collected, starting back in But, again, this history hardly reassures minorities. A more frequently heard rationale is that the Census Bureau is merely collecting the data necessary to administer the laws of the land.
But this is not very satisfying to the many Americans who object to the race-conscious orientation of many of these laws. Never mind the irony that the census itself functions unlike affirmative action. Think about it. If a student identifies herself as a minority on a college application, she improves her chances of admission.
Yet, identifying as a minority on the census form offers no such direct benefits, which is one reason why there is a minority undercount. But this is pretty weak stuff. The takeaway: The terms were confusing and needed to be defined or eliminated altogether. Census officials also found that people were more likely to report their race as long as they had a way to express their self-identification.
Tweaks and additions to the form continue today. Last year, the Census Bureau met with the Arab American Institute and leading Middle Eastern and Arab American scholars, activists, and organizations to discuss including it to the form in This and other data collected from the NCT will be instrumental in shaping the census form. But for MENA communities — estimated at 3. In recognition of those difficulties, the Census Bureau recommended adding race checkboxes for both Hispanic and MENA groups to the census.
But the OMB, which must approve such changes, did not do so. The OMB did not reply to a request for an interview and the Census Bureau did not make anyone available for an interview in the three months it took to report this story. One tweak made to the census could provide some information on MENA and other minority populations hidden within the broader categories, Dowling says. But without a checkbox, the information will be in a less accessible form.
As minority groups fight for greater visibility, and the race question gets wound up in ideas about self-affirmation and group empowerment, the census data have been getting more difficult to decipher since the shift to self-identification. With the power to check their own race box, many people previously identified as white have embraced a nonwhite or mixed-race identity.
From to , the American Indian population grew from , to ,, with an average annual growth rate of just 1. But over the next several decades, and coinciding with the shift to self-identification, that population grew to almost 2 million by — with an average annual growth rate of 4. That meteoric growth extends well beyond what is possible through births alone, Liebler says. Working with collaborators at the Census Bureau, Liebler looked at changes to the American Indian category between the and censuses.
The rest either alternated between single-race and mixed-race American Indian or added or dropped American Indian altogether from one census to another. That last category of people was less likely to report tribal affiliation or live in an American Indian area than those in the other two groups.
When education statistics coupled with census race data make it appear as if American Indians in many regions have become more educated, it implies that American Indians no longer require as much government support for education, Liebler says.
From to , Roth interviewed individuals who purchased genetic tests and then re-interviewed 89 of those respondents after the census. Reporting in the July American Journal of Sociology , Roth showed that 14 percent of participants changed their race in from that used in based on the test results. After taking a genetic ancestry test, white respondents were most likely to change how they perceived their own race or ethnicity.
Source: W. Roth and B. But extensive interviews with the participants revealed striking group differences. While just 25 percent of black respondents chose a new racial or ethnic identity, about 40 percent of white respondents did so.
The ability to cherry-pick race is a uniquely white privilege, Roth says. What Roth is getting at is the idea that discrimination is more about how a person is seen by others than how they see themselves.
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