In January through March of 2006, the American Community Survey (ACS) conducted the first test of new and modified content since the ACS reached full implementation levels of data collection. The results of that testing will determine the content for the 2008 ACS. To meet the primary objective of the 2006 ACS Content Test, analysts evaluated changes to question wording, response categories, instructions, or examples relative to the current version of the questions.

Period of Military Service

The objective for including the period of military service topic in the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) Content Test was to improve the quality of the data for this topic from the ACS.This objective stemmed from four sources: (1) the Census 2000 Content Reinterview Survey (CRS) showed moderate levels of inconsistency in the data for several period of service categories; (2) anecdotal evidence suggests that respondents tend to omit reporting service in periods in which they only served briefly; (3) the existing question is highly demanding of the respondent's concentration and patience; and (4) the existing question has more categories than are currently needed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the chief stakeholder for the item. The Content Test used the existing question as the control question. The test question is a modified version of the existing question using opposite placement of the parenthetical material for the categories for the Vietnam era, Korean War, and World War II (forexample, the control reads: “Vietnam era (August 1964 to April 1975)); the test reads: “August 1964 to April 1975 (Vietnam era)” ).

The selection criteria for choosing the test question were that, compared with the control question: (1) there was no difference in the distributions of veterans by periods of military service; (2) the item nonresponse rates were the same or lower; (3) the simple response variances were the same or lower; and (4) the number of multiple responses were the same or higher. With respect to these criteria, the test question failed to meet the first criteria, and met the othercriteria only because the results showed no statistical differences between the control and test questions (indicating that one version was not better at meeting the criteria than the other). Therefore, the data do not support using the test version on the 2008 ACS.