Hispanic origin and race are two of the most problematic data elements in censuses and surveys. These data are needed for monitoring and enforcing civil rights and allocating federal funding. To improve cross-survey comparability, the Office of Managment and Budget issued Directive 15 in 1977 (OMB 1977) to standardized the minimum basic categories in federal data collections. These include four mandated categories for race-- white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaskan Native-- and one category for Hispanic origin (sometimes referred to as "ethnicity"), which can be collected in either separate or combined race/origin questions, as shown in Table 1.