Participation in the 1990 decennial census: Politics, privacy, pressures

Theoretical perspectives on survey participation suggest that survey participation is a form of community involvement, reflecting a sense of civic obligation that also motivates such behavior as voting, serving on juries, and paying taxes. Using data from the Survey of Census Participation (SCP), we investigate this hypothesis with respect to mail response to the 1990 census. We examine such motivating factors as structural and attitudinal measures of alienation as well as more proximal measures of knowledge of and attitudes toward the census and concerns about privacy and confidentiality. We also examine a variety of constraining factors, including literacy, facility with the English language, and available time to complete the form. Using multivariate analysis, we explore the relative effects of these factors on the likelihood of returning the completed census form by mail and discuss the implications of our findings for participation in the census and political participation more generally. Theoretical perspectives on survey participation (e.g., Goyder & Leiper, 1985; Groves, Cialdini, & Couper, 1992) suggest that willing-ness to complete an interview or mail back a questionnaire is a form of community involvement, reflecting a sense of civic obligation that also motivates such behavior as voting, serving on juries, and paying taxes. This argument has special force with respect to the U.S. decen-nial census, an enterprise of the U.S. government that represents the only mandatory survey of individuals in this country and involves all Authors ’ Note: We thank Nancy Mathiowetz for her contributions to an earlier version of this article. We also thank James C. Garand and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. All analyses were conducted at the Census Bureau, in compliance with the confidentiality provisions of the decennial census and the Survey of Census Participation. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the official views of the Censu