So we suspected that the format of the nonresponse followup form was the culprit. If that were the case, one should see some obvious mismatches between the name of the person written on the form and the recorded sex of that person. Bingo! A qualitative inspection of some of the records showed suspicious combinations (e.g., “Harold” recorded as a “female”). Past research led us to believe that the name entered was likely to be more accurate than the recorded sex. How could the unintentional mistakes be fixed? We have an analysis of the full Census that lists the percentage male and female for all first names. Some names are common for both males and females (e.g., “Leslie,” “Dana,” “Alex”). Other names are very dominantly one sex or another (e.g., “Mary,” “Thomas,” “Alicia”). Our analysts identified the names that were 95% or higher male and those 95% or higher female. Then we completely reanalyzed the entire 2010 Census. When we discovered one of the names in the two lists that had a very unlikely sex reported to it, we noted that as a likely error. When we count those apparent mistakes and reclassify them as a consistent name-sex pair, we found that the same-sex couples counts from the Census agree with other estimates. The best comparison is to the sample-based estimates of the American Community Survey, which moved to the improved question format in 2008. The chart below shows why we are confident that the “preferred estimates” are likely much better than the original counts. Continue reading

This is a day to do things with passion. You'll have excellent concentration and focus. Try now to get too intense emotionally. Avoid sharp exchanges with loved ones. Others may tend to go to extremes, get jealous, over react. Great for troubleshooting, problem solving, research, scientific work- and making love. Continue reading