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Archived ACS Webpage Content

Date Archived: November 2020

The U.S. Census Bureau is replacing the Census Long Form for 2010 with a continuous survey called the American Community Survey. With the ACS, the Census Bureau hopes to:

• Provide federal, state, and local governments an information base for the administration and evaluation of government programs;
• Improve the 2010 Census; and
• Provide data users with timely demographic, housing, social, and economic data updated every year that ban be compared across states, communities, and population groups.

Census Bureau hotlines:

AFF: 1-800-923-8282
Data Ferrett: 1-866-437-0171
Census Bureau Regional Offices

ACS Articles and Presentations

• Census Bureau - Implementing the ACS
• Seasonality of Transportation Data (Also available in Adobe PDF format - 214 KB) July 2004
• Analysis of Project Flow and Use of RDC Services for the ACS Research (Also available in Adobe PDF format - 182 KB)
• Frequently Asked Questions (Developed by San Diego Association of Governments) April 2005

Tabular Products

The Census Bureau will be producing 1 and 5 year tabular data from ACS. To find out the frequency of tabulation for each geography, please visit: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/news/data-releases.html

Current Products

• Base Tables - simple descriptive tabulations of basic concepts and variables.
• Tabular Profiles - Key summary measures, derived measures (e.g., medians), and collapsed distributions of variables selected from the Base Tables.
• Narrative Profiles - Short prose narratives with simple graphs based on some of the summary information in the Tabular Profiles
• Geographic Ranking Tables - Tables and related graphs that show the rank order of geographic areas on key statistics or derived measures.

Proposed Products

• Subject Tables - Predefined tables with frequently requested information on a single topic for a single geographic area.
• Subpopulation Profiles - This new product would provide certain characteristics from the Tabular Profiles for a specific race or ethnic group or population subgroup.
• Thematic Maps - Similar to the geographic ranking tables, with the added advantage of visually displaying on a map the geographic variation of a key summary measure or derived measure.
• Analytic Reports (in an early development phase) - These could be short documents, two to three pages, on a single topic or theme, or they could be longer documents covering several topics or the entire content of the survey

ACS Training

• The ACS Statistical Analyzer developed by University of South Florida, Center for Urban Transportation Research
• Challenging the Census Bureau Population Estimates: The Census Bureau County Estimates are used as controls for weighting the American Community Survey samples. Therefore, the ACS results are highly reliant on reasonable population estimates. The Census Bureau has a system in place to challenge the estimates.
• CNSTAT project: Using the American Community Survey: Benefits and Challenges
• Spreadsheet to Calculate ACS Margins of Error and Statistical Significance for Sums, Proportions and Ratios developed by New York Data Center

ACS Archives

The NCHRP 8-48 "Using American Community Service Data for Transportation Planning" project will also provide some guidance for transprotation planners on the use of ACS data.

• View the NCHRP Research Statement on ACS