The American Housing Survey (AHS) is a survey of occupied and vacant housing units sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau every two years. One module of the AHS consists of unit questions that collect an inventory of the number and types of rooms in respondents’ homes. In 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau conducted a split ballot field test on paper to assess how two different versions of questions performed that collected the inventory of rooms in respondents’ homes, with the goal of selecting one of these sets of questions to field in the 2015 AHS.

During analysis, the count of rooms for a given housing unit that was collected from the survey questions was matched to the count of rooms from a tour of the respondent's home and to the count of rooms from administrative records. Additionally, behavior coding analysis was conducted to highlight any difficulties in administering either version of the unit questions. The results of the largely qualitative analysis of data from the field test follow, along with a recommendation regarding the best method to implement in the 2015 AHS.