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Initial Addresses and Sample Selected and Final Interviews


# Synthetic interviews were part of an effort to improve American Community Survey estimates of the group quarters population for substate areas. Synthetic interviews were created by imputing the characteristics of interviewed group quarters persons into group quarters facilities that were not in sample that year or period. Final actual interviews are the interviews obtained from sampled group quarters residents. For more information, read the ACS Group Quarters Small Area Estimation user note.

& The effects of the pandemic on ACS activities in 2020 resulted in a lower number of addresses in sample as well as fewer interviews than a typical year. For more information, see the Analytic Report. Additionally for 2020, a small number of vacant housing unit addresses that had been originally coded as non-interviews were converted to vacant units through a modeling process in order to improve ACS estimates. These were included as interviews in these counts. For more information, see the user note .

% In 2019, noise injection replaced rounding as our method to reduce disclosure risk for interview counts. As part of that review, we determined that the sample counts did not require protection. For more information, see User Note.

+ Sample and interview counts were rounded for 2018 to help reduce disclosure risk.

^ Hurricanes caused a disruption of data collection activities from September through December of 2017 in Puerto Rico. The sample that was affected by this interruption in data collection has been omitted from the 2017 Puerto Rico sample and interview counts. For more information, see User Note.

* As a result of the 2013 government shutdown, the ACS did not have a second mailing, a telephone followup, nor a person followup operation for the 2013 October panel. Only respondents from the first mailing (Internet in the United States, paper questionnaire in Puerto Rico) contribute to the overall response for this panel. This caused a drop in the number of Final Interviews (housing units) for the 2013 sample year.

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