IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jpamgt/v45y2026i1ne70004.html

Citizenship question effects on household survey response

Author

Listed:
  • J. David Brown
  • Misty L. Heggeness

Abstract

Differential coverage across demographic groups in a census or survey can reduce the accuracy and representativeness of the resulting statistics. Researchers traditionally have used community‐level measures to study response behavior and coverage, which can obscure patterns for small population groups. We illustrate this using household‐level citizenship and immigration status. We construct household‐level characteristics using administrative records for each address in a randomized control trial (RCT) survey that measured the effects of including a citizenship question on a decennial census questionnaire. Our results show that the self‐response rate to the questionnaire without the citizenship question ranges from 70.4% in households with only U.S.‐born non‐Hispanic Whites to 27.5% in those with at least one likely undocumented person (a 42.9 percentage point gap). Including the citizenship question widens the gap by a statistically significant 2.4 percentage points. Compared to households with all U.S.‐born non‐Hispanic Whites, the household roster omission rate in households with at least one likely undocumented member is 6.0 times higher without the citizenship question and 10.4 times higher with the question. These patterns help explain why administrative record‐based population data include more non‐citizens than survey‐based official statistics.

Suggested Citation

  • J. David Brown & Misty L. Heggeness, 2026. "Citizenship question effects on household survey response," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(1), January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:45:y:2026:i:1:n:e70004
    DOI: 10.1002/pam.70004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.70004
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/pam.70004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:45:y:2026:i:1:n:e70004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/34787/home .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.