Acceso usuarios
Phung Nguyen
Since the early 1980s, the decennial census has been embroiled in unrelenting controversies concerning the proposed use of statistical sampling to combat the undercount. These controversies have produced numerous analyses by statisticians, legal scholars, political scientists, and historians with different attributes and analytical frameworks. This article presents these controversies from an administrative perspective, with emphasis on accountability and accountability conflicts. As an administrative agency with its mission to produce accurate and credible statistics¿free from political manipulation¿the Census Bureau is accountable to its hierarchical authority in the Department of Commerce, Congress, the statistical community, and the courts. Conflicts often take place among these accountability dimensions, breeding controversies in census operations, hindering the bureau's efficiency, and threatening the credibility of census statistics. This article analyzes the causes and consequences of these conflicts and presents ideas for further exploration on the issue of accountability conflict and its impact on the quality and credibility of census statistics.
