@NJDad, I looked through the (lengthy) instructions for completing the e-response form for the dorm (or nursing home or other faciity). It appears that the information asked of each individual is the same as on the CQ and the ICQ, except that the detailed origin or racial subgroup is not asked. That’s probably because that detailed information will generally be unknown for most of the facilities.
@smdur1970 Makes sense. Thank you for the answer.
Guess we’ll be filling out ours on paper instead of online.
First question:
Are you filling out this form for 123 Maple Street, Anytown USA, ZIPXY?
Since my house isn’t in Anytown, but in neighboring Othertown, I answered “no”, hoping to get an opportunity to correct the record and have my answers correctly attributed to Othertown.
Nope, not how it works. The next prompt was to re-enter the 12 digit code, which I did. Then the nice online form told me I was not able to use that code since I answered “no” to the address question, and to call the 800 number with questions.
I called the 800 number, and was told a paper form would be sent to the house.
So. Can’t say I’m impressed with the coding so far, but here we are. If we are still socially separating when the paper form arrives I should have plenty of time to fill it out.
You may want to check what the USPS’ official address for your address is. There are cases where the “city” in the USPS’ official address for an address is not the actual city that the address is in (probably most commonly when the address is in an unincorporated part of the county).
Just filled out ours yesterday. I did count my college D at our home address. Maybe a mistake, but she will be home due to the virus and will not be at her off campus apartment. I told her we already counted her, so if she gets something associated with the other address not to count herself.
I also was surprised to see “origin” listed under racial groups. I have only one race and one ethnicity. H has 3 races and at least 7 ethnicities/origins. I listed almost everything–why not? LOL. They are going to see some weird stuff now that so many people have done genetic testing. For the option “some other ethnicity”–fill in the blank–I bet some people will claim to be Klingons, Aliens, Martians…
I got mine in the mail today. Went to go fill it out and realized I couldn’t because I don’t actually know what my family will look like on April 1 ?
Our zip code includes part of 3 different cities, and our city includes part of 3 different zip codes. So it is a known issue, and for utility bills and most purposes I don’t worry which of the cities they list. But I got a crazy idea that for the Census it should list the right city. The surprise was that once I answered “no” to the first question, there was no going back, it went straight to ruling out online entry.
I may have filled ours out wrong…listed s in home, but later in the personal part was able to list that he also is college student that lives away. For the “origins” question, I listed 3, H was 2, which made our kids 5 types of “white”, I guess. It does seem a little odd though considering the most recent of those is 4 generations back for my kids-both of my great-grandparents on my mother’s side. My Dad’s side goes as far back as before the Revolutionary War!
Our closest European origins were >100 years and 3+ generations ago…plus we have ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and came over on the Mayflower. There are also family tales of some Native American ancestry. We used “American” as our origin.
We just filled ours out; I put “American” and husband put “3rd generation American.”
I went first and picked “female” for my sex of the two choices. Husband went next; first option was “opposite sex husband/wife etc.” His next question was sex: male or female. I’m wondering how many opposite sexes there to a binary choice with female as one choice and male the other. Seems like it could have auto filled…
H filled in the “origins” with Italian, German and English. I just put in American even though my ancestors were from those same countries. I didn’t see the point.
When I worked for the Federal Govt., it would NOT take the name of the unincorporated town I lived in. On my paycheck, it used one town, on my insurance reimbursements, another. There were about 5 towns that used the same zip code and it just didn’t like the name of the ‘town’ that my house was in. Also, it was St. Johns, and sometimes it would take it if I wrote Saint Johns but not St. Johns and not St. John’s (which was incorrect but sometimes used).
FaFSA has that issue too.
The mail folks were used to it.
This census is only going to get filled out by the haves. If this data is weaponized in the future we will regret having participated knowing so many are not being represented. It needs to be delayed.
@NJres
If you are a census taker I hope you do better than the census taker that came to us 10 years ago.
When the “on the ground” census takers got to our house, we weren’t home but my 9 and 11 year old were playing in the front yard. The census taker came into our yard and started hounding my minor children. Asking if there parents were home, where we were when we would be home and started asking them personal questions from the census questionnaire including income.
My kids were very scared. I’ve never been more angry in my life!!! Nobody has any right to talk to my minor children, or come onto my property. My children thought they were going to be kidnapped.
I tried to get information from the census about who was sent to our home but I was told that due to privacy issues they couldn’t tell me. EXCUSE ME. Was not our privacy and safety just seriously violated. I was told that they had every right to do what they did including scare the crap out of my MINOR children.
When the census finally got us on the phone, I complained and they didn’t care.
When they started asking census questions (seems like there were a lot more than this year)., I answered that 4 people lived here. Every question they asked after that I answered “The census is to count people and 4 people live here”
I repeated that answer for every other question. They were very upset with me (GOOD).
Anybody respond online for a second home? We completed the online census for our primary residence. We are now trying to complete the one for our second residence which is unoccupied. When we indicate that the number will be 0 occupants on April 1st, it asks where we will be counted and then takes to the form and asks us to complete it for that (primary) address. We have already completed it. Do we do it again? It lets me get all the way to the last screen but I am reluctant to hit submit until I know that the duplicate answers will not be counted twice.
Send it. It will be flagged as a duplicate for that address, and you might get a phone call as follow-up if the people dealing with duplicates can’t figure out that you are a two-address family.
We got the short form.
I think the origin for whites is a new question. Origins can be very broad: Celtic, Germanic, Mediterranean, Slavic, Hellenic, European…
We didn’t list individual countries.
I checked the “white” box, and when it asked for origin, I also wrote, “white”. What do they want? Lithuania, Latvia? Not giving them that.
Y’all, please forgive me if I am naive, but why do people think the census is out to get them? I’m white. My husband is Italian and I am Irish. That’s what we put. I mean what is the government going to use against me by having that information?
There are SO many other things going on right now that I think are very “Big Brother”, this is not one of them for me. Am I missing something?
Some people may be concerned about the use of individual and neighborhood Census information for things like that described in https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/census-bureau-japanese-americans/ . However, it is unlikely that white people of European (other than Spanish or Jewish) ethnic origin have much to worry about such things, compared to those of minority racial and ethnic groups.