Why am I Being Contacted by Census – I Returned my Form!

Many have asked this question, here's is the latest information from the Census Bureau on this subject:

We’ve finished the third week of the Nonresponse Followup stage of the 2010 Census. The completion of interviews in this phase is proceeding roughly on schedule. As of Saturday, we completed over 50% of the entire workload.

Some questions are coming in from folks who completed and mailed back their census forms, but are being visited by census workers in person, or receiving a phone call from the US Census Bureau. It might be a good time to go over the different reasons this might be happening. (All of the reasons are variants of attempts to make sure we’ve counted people once and only once and in the right place, their April 1, 2010, usual residence.) We use two ways of contacting people -- face to face visits and telephone calls.

Here are some reasons why you might get a knock on the door:

1. We received your mailed-in form too late to scratch your unit off the list of addresses to visit. (Since some forms get lost in transit, we train our enumerators to ask the census questions at every door they’re assigned; please be patient with this request).
2. There was missing or conflicting information on the form we received. (We want to make sure the information we collect from your household is complete and correct.)
3. We can’t match the address you provided on a “Be Counted” form or over the phone to our master address list. (We send the enumerator to you to make sure all information in properly attached to the right housing unit).

If we are uncertain about any of the answers your household provided on the census, we may call to get a better understanding of the situation and ensure we get an accurate count.

Here are a few reasons why you may receive a telephone call from the US Census Bureau:

1. If the number given for how many people were living at the address on April 1 does not match the number of people for whom information was provided.
2. If the form indicates that additional people were staying at the address on April 1 but were not included in the household’s count.
3. If we suspect we have received duplicate information about a housing unit or individual, we will follow-up to make sure people are not counted twice.

You can confirm that the individual calling is really from the Census Bureau by running through this checklist. Read more about the Nonresponse Followup on Census Director Groves’ blog at http://blogs.census.gov/2010census/.

Thank you for your commitment to the 2010 Census.