Outcomes of the 2010 Vacant Delete Check and Nonresponse Followup Residual Census Enumeration Operations

The 2010 Vacant/Delete Check operation verified the housing unit status of addresses classified as vacant or nonexistent (deletes) during the Nonresponse Followup operation. This operation also included a first time enumeration of addresses added to the Census universe and addresses that returned a blank mail questionnaire. The 2010 Nonresponse Followup Residual operation consisted of a follow-up of housing units that were identified as occupied during Nonresponse Followup without any information about the number of people that lived at the address and additional blank mail questionnaire addresses. These two operations were independent follow ups to ensure the quality of the Nonresponse Followup enumerators work and to interview certain housing units for the first time. This paper will focus only on the results from these two enumeration operations and report on the number of occupied, vacant, and nonexistent addresses in these operations. For both of these operations this paper will also show the demographic characteristics of the people living in the housing units as reported to the enumerators and methods by which the interviews were conducted. 1. Background The U.S. Census Bureau conducted the 23 rd decennial census of the country’s population in 2010. A large percentage of the country’s housing units received a census questionnaire either in the mail or from a census enumerator and roughly two-thirds of those households returned their questionnaires by mail as intended. The remaining households that did not respond by mail received a personal visit by a census enumerator who was sent to capture their census information. These personal visits happened during the Nonresponse Followup (NRFU) operation. After NRFU was finished there were two operations that followed that interview housing units in the same areas that NRFU was conducted. Those two operations were the Vacant Delete Check (VDC) and NRFU Residual. The two operations follow up on different types of addresses. VDC ensured that vacant and nonexistent housing units were not misclassified and NRFU Residual was designed to obtain more information on occupied housing units. The VDC operation also included a first time enumeration of housing units that were not able to receive a mail back questionnaire due to when the Census Bureau received the address. 1