Technical documents are written materials designed to help people use published statistics. While much of the information is common to experts and specialists, the goal of a technical document is to explain things to the general reader who knows little or nothing about the topic.

Complete technical documents may include any of the following resources:

Codebooks - Information about the files, including descriptive information on all of the variables.

Data Dictionary - A repository of information describing database attributes including identification of record codes and area characteristics, endnotes, and table section.

Help Guides - These documents explain changes to tables, geography, disclosure, variance estimation, and more.

Historical Changes - Information for the current survey year and prior survey years is available here.

Methodology - The methods we use to collect and produce the census, survey, or program, including sampling, questions, collection, review, quality, weighting, etc.

Questionnaires - Find the most recent questionnaire and whether an archive of past questionnaires is available online.

Subject Definitions - Definitions of population, housing and other variables to help you understand the results of a census or survey.

User Notes - Learn more about issues affecting the census, survey, or program, including design, collection, production, and release, to be better informed when analyzing stats.