Response Rates - Data – Methodology – American Community Survey

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Response Rates - Data

United States

Response Rates and Reasons for Noninterviews (in percent) — Housing Units

	Housing Unit	Reasons for Noninterviews
Year	Response Rate	Refusal	Unable to Locate	No One Home	Temporarily Absent	Language Problem	Insufficient Data	Other
2011	97.6	1.1	0.0	0.6	0.1	0.0	0.2	0.4
2010	97.5	1.1	0.0	0.6	0.1	0.0	0.2	0.4
2009	98.0	0.8	0.0	0.6	0.1	0.0	0.2	0.3
2008	97.9	0.8	0.0	0.6	0.1	0.0	0.2	0.3
2007	97.7	0.9	0.2	0.5	0.1	0.0	0.4	0.2
2006	97.5	1.0	0.3	0.5	0.1	0.0	0.4	0.3
2005	97.3	1.0	0.4	0.5	0.1	0.0	0.3	0.3
2004	93.1	1.0	0.3	0.5	0.1	0.0	0.4	4.7
2003	96.7	1.7	0.3	0.6	0.1	0.0	0.3	0.2
2002	97.7	1.0	0.0	0.5	0.1	0.0	0.4	0.2
2001	96.7	1.3	0.0	0.7	0.1	0.0	0.7	0.4
2000	95.1	1.7	0.0	1.1	0.2	0.1	1.0	0.8

Response Rates and Reasons for Noninterviews (in percent) — Group Quarters

	Group Quarters (Person)	Reasons for Noninterviews
Year	Response Rate	GQ Person Refusal	Unable to Locate GQ Person	Resident Temporarily Absent	Language Problem	Insufficient Data	GQ Person Other	Whole GQ Refusal	Whole GQ Other
2011	96.9	0.8	0.2	0.1	0.0	0.1	0.7	0.4	0.8
2010	97.6	0.9	0.2	0.1	0.0	0.2	0.4	0.1	0.5
2009	98.0	0.9	0.1	0.1	0.0	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.3
2008	98.0	0.5	0.1	0.1	0.0	0.1	1.0	0.2	0.0
2007	97.8	0.4	0.2	0.1	0.0	0.0	1.2	0.3	0.0
2006	97.4	0.8	0.2	0.1	0.0	0.1	0.6	0.5	0.2

Note: As a result of a reduction in funding in 2004, ACS dropped the telephone and personal visit followup operations for the January 2004 panel, thus only allowing mail respondents to contribute to the overall response for that panel. Dropping the nonresponse followup operations for that single panel month reduced the annual response rate by about four percentage points. If we exclude the January panel from the calculation, the annual response rate rises to 97.3% The Census Bureau revised the methodology for calculation of the response rate in 2004 and although a similar cost reduction measure was taken in 2002 the response rates provided for 2002 do not reflect this new method.