Research Reports

Final Report of Usability Testing of the 2013 National Census Test (NCT) Online Survey: Focus on Coverage, Race Questions, Date Format

Kathleen Ashenfelter, Erica Olmsted-Hawala, Sabin Lakhe, and Lawrence Malakhoff

ABSTRACT

The US Census Bureau’s Human Factors and Usability Research Group performed usability and accessibility testing of the 2013 National Census Test (NCT) online survey from June 7-June 21, 2013. The results from the usability study are presented in this report. The focus of the 2013 NCT is on coverage issues so we examined some new approaches to presenting coverage questions for the usability test. There were four major manipulations within the study: 1) Presence or absence of a POPCOUNT screen containing a list of residence rules on Roster questions; 2) Two versions of the coverage question for Undercount questions; 3) Two versions of the Race/Origin question; and 4) Two versions of coverage questions for Overcount questions.

CITATION:

Kathleen Ashenfelter, Erica Olmsted-Hawala, Sabin Lakhe, and Lawrence Malakhoff. (2013). Final Report of Usability Testing of the 2013 National Census Test (NCT) Online Survey: Focus on Coverage, Race Questions, Date Format. Research and Methodology Directorate, Center for Survey Measurement Study Series (Survey Methodology #2013-01). U.S. Census Bureau. Available online at <http://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/ssm2013-01.pdf>.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Research and Methodology Directorate, Center for Survey Measurement

Published online: January 17, 2013
Last revised: January 17, 2013