Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990 TAG: 9003202360
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
All that most of us will face April 1 will be seven questions about ourselves and an equal number about our homes.
But every sixth household, selected at random, will be sent a longer questionnaire form. It contains the basic questions plus another 19 about housing and 26 about people in the household. Several of the additional questions have multiple parts.
The Census Bureau figures it will take up to 43 minutes to fill out the long form.
Postal employees should deliver the forms at the end of this week.
The forms should be completed and mailed back to the Census Bureau on April 1. Those who don't return the form will be visited by a census taker later that month.
Completing the forms is a matter of filling in little circles in a familiar multiple-choice format.
The time spent on the short form depends on the number of people in the household. Each of the seven questions must be answered for each resident: sex, race, age and year of birth, marital status, whether the person is Hispanic and his or her relationship to others in the household.
The first two housing questions attempt to determine whether you excluded or included a person you were not sure about - someone in a hospital, for instance, or a person who stays in the house every so often and has no other home, or a newborn.
Then you must describe the building you live in, with answers ranging from a mobile home to a complex of more than 50 apartments.
The form asks the number of rooms, the ownership, whether the house is on 10 or more acres, and the value or rent.
That completes the job for the short form.
Those who receive the long form may have to research their household records to provide answers to the additional questions.
They will have to describe their housing in more detail, including the date it was built and when they moved in.
Questions cover the number of bedrooms, bath and kitchen facilities, heating fuel, water and sewage.
They will have to write in their yearly cost for real-estate taxes, property insurance and all utilities.
Multi-part questions cover details about home mortgages, condominium fees or mobile-home costs.
The Census Bureau also wants to learn more about the people living in the house. Questions cover citizenship, ethnic origin, education, language, military service and number of children.
Most queries, however, concern employment.
Those with the long form will have to describe their jobs, how they get to work and the time of day they leave, the location of the job and the type of work performed. The unemployed will be asked whether they have been seeking work and when they were last employed.
Finally, the government wants income figures from wages or self-employment, pension, child support, alimony, rentals, dividends and interest.
All of the questions are based on the family situation as of April 1.
The law requires everyone to answer all the questions, but it guarantees privacy of the information even from other government agencies.
Those who need more information or help with the forms can call the Bureau of the Census toll-free at (800) 999-1990.
This week, the Bureau of the Census will conduct surveys at a small sampling of homes in the Roanoke Valley for ongoing studies of the labor force. Census staff members will be asking questions about employment, income and migration as part of a comprehensive study of median family income, poverty and unemployment.
The employment survey is separate from the 1990 U.S. Census, so householders visited this week will still need to complete census forms. 6
by CNB