Research Summaries

not to report this experience under the
old procedure, and reported their high-
est credential (the high school diploma)
instead.

Data in the portion of the table show-
ing attainment at the college level or
above tend to lend validity to the obser-
vations that have been made about the
ability of the new item to better classify
individuals with respect to the specific
degrees they hold. For example, the
new item identifies 8.5 million Associ-
ate degree-holders, who formerly were
distributed primarily among the catego-
ties of 1 to 6 years of college. The table
also shows that just 81 percent of per-
sons who hold a Bachelors as their
highest degree have completed exactly
4 years of college. Overall, the new
question counts more than 75 million
persons with some college experience,
as opposed to just under 70 million
counted as such using the old item. In
general, while responses to the old and
new items demonstrate a high level of
consistency, it is the inconsistent re-
sponses, particularly for high school
completion and beyond, that give the
new item a decided advantage in terms
of accuracy and usefulness.

CHANGING PATTERNS of enrollment and
new perceptions of education as human
capital required a serious reexamination
ofthe conventional cps educational at-
tainment question. The growing impor-
tance of postsecondary education to the
economy and the increasing credential-
ing of individuals dictate that more direct
measures be used. The new educational
attainment item is a major departure
from past procedures, but it provides
more relevant and useful data for current
and future analyses. Oo

Footnote

Robert Kominski, “Evaluation of the 1980
Decennial Census Education Questions,” Prelimi-
nary Evaluation Results Memorandum, 104 (Bu-
reau of the Census, 1985); Paul M. Siegel and
Robert Kominski, “The Quality of Census Data
on Educational Attainment,” Paper presented be-
fore the Census Advisory Committee on Popula-
tion Statistics (Bureau of the Census, 1986);
Robert Kominski and Paul M. Siegel, “Measuring
Educational Attainment in the 1990 Census,” Pa-
per presented at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the
American Sociological Association, Chicago, 1L;
and Robert Kominski, “Education and Earnings:
Empirical Findings from Alternative Operational-

izations,” Proceedings of the Social Statistics
Section (Washington, American Statistical Asso-
ciation, 1988), pp. 82-87

Undercoverage
of Hispanics
in household surveys

Ruth B. McKay

The fact that individuals in some racial
and ethnic groups have a high rate of
being missed in surveys has become an
important subject of discussion and de-
bate by analysts, policymakers, social
scientists, and other concerned persons.
The focus of this report is on factors
contributing to the undercount of the
Hispanic population in the Current
Population Survey (crs).! The cps mea-
sures labor force activity in a monthly
sample of approximately 60,000 house-
holds selected to represent the U.S.
population.?

Undercounts can occur when the sur-
vey enumerator misses an entire house-
hold (whole household undercoverage)
or when the person reporting for the
household does not list all of the occu-
pants of the household (within house-
hold undercoverage). The major causes
of whole household undercoverage have
been identified as missed addresses from
the decennial census and deliberately
omitted households, for example, a
dwelling subdivided into several unre-
ported housing units. Within household
undercoverage is believed to stem from
differences in definitions of household
membership used by the survey and re-
spondents in ethnic communities.*

Anthropological research methods
were used to investigate factors associ-
ated with undercount of Hispanics in the
cps and the decennial census. The re-
search consisted of a small-scale field
study of a Salvadoran community and an
analysis of data collected from eight,

Ruth B. MaKay is a behavioral scientist in the
Statistical Methods Division, Bureau of Labor
Statistics.

38 Monthly Labor Review September 1993

predominantly Hispanic, sites studied by
the Bureau of the Census in its 1990 Al-
ternative Enumeration (discussed later).

The research methods

The anthropological research methods
most often used in undercoverage re-
search are from two areas: ethnography
and cognitivesanthropology. Ethnogra-
phy describes the culture, or way of life,
of a particular society, from the point of
view of members of that society. Efhno-
graphic methods include participant ob-
servation, which requires a period of
residence within the community so that
the ethnographer can become immersed
in the everyday realities of that society,
and the ethnographic interview, a par-
ticular kind of unstructured interview
that attempts to elicit the cultural pattern-
ing and context of the subject or topic un-
der discussion. Cognitive anthropolo-
gists study the conceptual categories
which members of a culture use to orga-
nize their experience of the world. A
good illustration of the application of
cognitive anthropological methods to
survey research is Elizabeth Gerber’s in-
vestigation of the concepts of “living
with” and “staying at” used by inner city
blacks in the District of Columbia. She
reported that a man who had not been in
his mother’s house for 5 months would,
under certain circumstances, be classi-
fied as “living with” his mother, and that
his relationship to a household in which
he had eaten and slept every day for the
past 5 months would be termed “staying
at” that household. The basis for such
classification involved, among other fac-
tors, intentionality about relationships,
and permanent versus temporary affilia-
tion with household units, that were
based in the everyday, commonplace
experience of domestic and economic re-
lationships within inner city black com-
munities.

The field study

In 1991, an ethnographic field study was
conducted in the Washington, pc, area to
investigate Hispanic respondents’ defi-
nitions of household membership and
residency. The largest Hispanic group
within the area is Salvadoran, and this
was the group chosen for study.

ona

|


force interview, each person was asked
the “new” attainment question. Inter-
viewers had explicit instructions to not
attempt to reconcile apparent discrepan-
cies between answers given for the two
items. While it is possible that some in-
dividuals may have tried to give an-
swers to both items that would agree
with each other (thus changing one of
the responses they might have given if
only one question were asked), the data
show that there still are important areas

of inconsistency between the two sets
of answers.

Table 1 shows weighted estimates of
the full cross-tabulation of the old and
new items for all persons aged 15 and
older. Overall, there is a great deal of
consistency between the levels reported
for the old and new items; 84.3 percent
of all responses were consistent, and
86.3 percent matched for educational
levels below college. Most of the in-
consistent responses below the college

jevel are off by one category; this may
be due to the elimination of the “attend-
ing/completed” follow-up question that
was a part of the old item. About half of
the responses that were a higher level in
the new item represented persons who
were classified as high school gradu-
ates using the old item, but chose
“some college, no degree” in response
to thenew item. One possibility is that
many individuals, having spent only a
small amount of time in college, opted
ia

1 Table 1. Educational attainment by highest grade completed or degree received, persons aged 15 and older in
¢ the U.S. civilian noninstitutional population, February 1990 Current Population Survey
i
| {In thousands}
: Highest grade No No Highest grade completed or degree received
i or year Total response | _ School :
7 completed Pt completed | Nursery | Kinder- | tst-ath | sth-8th 9th 10th 11th
1 school | garten | grade | grade grade grade | grade
| Total. 190,730 2,633 4,086 0 14 2651 | 15,659 | 8,434 10.476 | 8,658
} None 4,121 3t 4,007 0 10 46 7 0 0 0
i Elementary 1. 239 o 4 0 0 197 2 2 10 40
t Elementary 2 663 18 3 0 2 567 10 0 0 0
' Elementary 3 881 5 1 0 0 841 27 0 3 2
| Elementary 4... 4,012 14 0 0 0 865 124 3 0 0
b Elementary 5 1,260 18 4 0 0 40 1,185 0 5 0
: Elementary 6 2,727 7 1 0 0 42 2,533 29 1" 7
Elementary 7... 3,045 35 "1 0 ry 10 2,891 34 16 7
Elementary 8 .. 9,531 411 "1 0 2 13 8,406 a7 acy 25
' High school 1...... 9,084 92 0 0 0 10 213 | 7,304 4,220 56
| High school 2.......| 10,776 140 8 0 0 4 84 224 a7i9 | 1,252
High school 3. . 9,792 1 3 0 0 5 25 36 234 | 7,020
High school 4. . 70,667 987 12 0 0 6 123 76 175 262
; College 1. 13,020 182 2 0 0 3 1 2 6 13
: College 2. 15,644 216 0 0 0 0 6 2 0 3
1 College 3 . 6,033 80 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 3
i College 4. 21,268 326 3 0 0 1 1 0 2 0
i College 5. 3,655 49 0 0 0 t) 0 0 0 0
College 6 . 10,313 185 0 0 ‘o ) 0 6 0 0
i 12th 12th grade Some Occupational | Academic Profes- Doc-
\ grade,no | diploma college, | associate | associate Bachelors Masters sional toral
\ diploma ‘or GED no degree degree degree at eg! degree | degree
Total........ . 3,918 61,702 33,220 4,338 4,263 23,127 7,533 1,854 1,163
t None ........ 1 1 0 6 0 0 0 1 0
Elementary 1. 3 3 3 4 0 2 0 t) 0
| Elementary 2 0 40 13 0 3 0 1 0 0
H Elementary 3....... 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Elementary 4... . 0 2 0 0 0 4 0 0 0
| Elementary 5 0 3 2 0 0 4 0 0 0
Elementary 6 . 5 10 2 0 2 2 5 0 2
t Elementary 7. 6 23 6 1 0 3 2 0 2
' Elementary 8 25 119 12 13 0 0 0 3 0
t High school 1. 31 111 31 4 0 4 5 0 4
! High school 2. 40 240 49 6 0 1 5 2 4
High school 3. 1,500 765 80 17 5 6 4 0 4
High school 4. 2,248 59,102 7,011 352 89 131 38 42 18
College 1 .......... 26 704 14,482 327 168 61 8 23 1
College 2. ne 13 368 9,461 2,580 2,732 213 12 37 0
College 3... 4 93 4,187 584 722 292 24 40 3
College 4.5... 4 94 716 351 443 18,835 378 98 18
College 5... 3 3 109 44 42 2,013 1,321 5t 20
College 6. 2 23 87 48 87 1,558 5,730 1,558 4,090

Monthly Labor Review September 1993 37



Research
summaries

Measuring education
in the Current
Population Survey

Robert Kominski and Paul M. Siegel

The 1940 Decennial Census of Popula-
tion included a question about educa-
tional attainment that was a marked de-
parture from the way in which an
individual's level of education had been
measured in previous censuses. Prior to
1940, the educational level of respon-
dents was determined by asking whether
they could read and write. In the 1940
census, however, a question about the
highest grade of schooling completed
was asked of all persons. This item (later
modified to determine “highest grade or
year of school” completed) has for
nearly 50 years been the fundamental
means of assessing educational attain-
ment, both in the census and in a variety
of surveys, including the Current Popu-
lation Survey (cps).

That the years of schooling com-
pleted measure served for so long is a
strong testament to its utility and face
validity. Nevertheless, in 1990, the U.S.
Bureau of the Census implemented a
major change in the form of the question
and its possible response categories. The
decision to do so was difficult, but one
that became necessary because of
changes in the way persons acquire edu-
cation and view it as an economic and
social resource. Beginning in January
1992, the cps adopted a question similar
to that used in the 1990 census. This re-
port briefly discusses the form of the new
question, examines some of the factors
motivating the change, and presents data

Robert Kominski is Chief of the Education and
Social Stratification Branch and Paul M. Siegel is
Chief of the Education Analysis Staff in the Popu-
Jation Division of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

from a national cps test conducted in
February 1990 that shows the empirical
relationship between the old attainment
question and the new one.

The old and new items

The educational attainment question
used in the cps has been virtually un-
changed since the 1940’s. This question
appears on the control card of the inter-
view, and consists of two parts (exhibit
1, panel a). The first part asks, “What is
the highest grade or year of regular
school ... has ever attended?” This is
followed with the question, “Did...
complete the grade?” Response codes
range from 00 to 26, where the series 21
through 26 is used to represent years of
college. Persons having attended more
than 6 years of college are coded as ‘26’.
The two-part question allows the respon-
dent to indicate a grade that was at-
tended, but not completed. This would
include many persons who are currently
enrolled in that grade.

The new education-related survey
item introduced in January 1992 in-
volves several changes to the older item
(exhibit 1, panel b). A single question is
now asked: “What is the highest level of
school . . . has completed or the highest
degree . . . has received?” Response cat-
egories range from 3! to 46, an inten-
tional change to prevent field staff from
attempting to code the new question us-
ing the old years-of-schooling answers.
In the new item, response categories for
lower levels of schooling have been col-
lapsed into several summary categories.
A new category, “12th grade, No Di-
ploma,” has been added.

The major change in the item occurs in
the categories for high school completion
and beyond. Beginning with the re-
sponse, “High School Graduate—high
school diploma or the equivalent (for
example, GED),” the categories identify
specific degree completion levels, rather

34 Monthly Labor Review September 1993

than years of schooling. The focus of the
item remains “regular” schooling—that
is, schooling that is a part of the collegiate
system. No attempt has been made to in-
corporate postsecondary educational at-
tainment from institutions other than the
regular college system. Five different
levels of degree attainment are identi-
fied—Associate, Bachelors, Masters,
Professional, and Doctoral degrees. As-
sociate degrees are further distinguished
between those awarded in academic pro-
grams and those given for completing an
occupational or vocational program. A
residual category of “some college butno
degree” is used to identify persons who
have not completed a degree program.

Reasons for the change

Why was the educational attainment item
changed? The answers are several, most
suggested by a series of tests of results
using the old item and possible new alter-
natives, conducted during the 1980’s by
the Education and Social Stratification
Branch of the U.S. Census Bureau. These
analyses are documented ina series of pa-
pers and memoranda,! and are available
by contacting the branch directly (301-
763-1154). The main findings of this re-
search are summarized here.

Under the old procedures, years of
schooling completed tended to be
misclassified into degree status.

Users of cps data have become accus-
tomed to equating persons with 4 years
of college or more with graduates hold-
ing a Bachelors degree. Research based.
on four independent data sources, how-
ever, suggests that this is not always the
case. Estimates of the proportion of per-
sons with at least 4 years of college who
did not hoid at least a Bachelors degree
varied, from 13 percent in the 1980 cen-
sus Content Reinterview Survey and the
1986 National Content Test, to 7 percent
in data taken from the Survey of Income



cee ee

we

He ee

and Program Participation in 1984, and
to 6 percent in a February 1990 crs test.

‘Each of these estimates is based on

somewhat different methods of survey
administration, and this may account for
at least some of the variation. Neverthe-
less, the evidence indicates that a non-
trivial amount of misclassification oc-
curs when one infers attainment of a
degree from years of schooling.
Attempts to estimate demographi-
cally the population stock of Bachelors
degree-holders since 1940 (that is, by
accounting for births, deaths, and mi-
gration) yield an interesting pattern.
Through the 1970 census, efforts to bal-
ance the number of Bachelors degrees
awarded through time (as recorded in ad-
ministrative records) with the number of
Bachelors degree-holders as inferred
from the census showed a fair amount of
correspondence—at most a difference of
several hundred thousand. By the 1980
census, the difference had jumped to
well over a million “excess” Bachelors
degrees (as measured by years of school-
ing in the census), and extending the
method to the mid-1980’s using data
from the March 1985 ces showed the
excess remaining over a million. This
discrepancy between administrative
records and the “years-of-school-com-
pleted” data corresponds well to the
documented increase in the length of
time students are taking to obtain a
Bachelors degree: if respondents report
the number of years they have spent in

the postsecondary system rather than
their academic standing, this would ex-
acerbate the problem. Apart from this,
however, the number of degrees in-
ferred could be inflated simply because
more adults are undertaking additional
years of schooling without any inten-
tion of acquiring a degree. In this re-
spect also, the years-of-schooling mea-
sure becomes a misleading indicator of
the educational credentials individuals
hold.

The old procedures made it impossible to
identify specific degrees.

If the ability to infer the number of
“traditional” Bachelors degrees deterio-
rated over time, the ability to measure
other kinds of educational credentials
was poor from the start. Most notable
was the inability to identify holders of
Associate (generally 2-year) degrees
from years-of-schooling data. During the
1950’s and 1960’s, the early era of
growth in the 2-year college system, As-
sociate degrees were often seen as step-
ping stones to a 4-year credential. How-
ever, during the 1970’s and 1980’s, the
Associate degree became recognized as
a credential in its own right. The devel-
opment of many occupational and job-
specific curriculums in 2-year colleges
offered students who did not wish or
could not afford a 4-year degree the op-
portunity to obtain a postsecondary cre-
dential useful in obtaining employment.
The structure of the old years-of-school-

ing question made it impossible to iden-
tify these persons.

Similarly, the years-of-schooling ques-
tion could not provide direct evidence
about the growing pool of persons hold-
ing degrees beyond the Bachelors level.
The February 1990 cps test provides es-
timates showing that more than 10 mil-
lion U.S. adults hold advanced degrees
of somé sort, based on answers to the
new, degree-based question. These indi-
viduals represent a critical national re-
source, the size of which forfnerly could
only be roughly approximated in the crs
by the number of persons with 5 or more
years of college completed. Under the
old procedures, an estimate from the
February 1990 data would incorrectly at-
tribute such advanced degrees to nearly 4
million more persons.

Use of the former item led to uncertainty
in the classification of high school
graduates.

Many people, although they did not
complete 12 years of schooling, hold a
high school diploma because of pro-
grams like the Gep, night school, and
other equivalency mechanisms. Indi-
viduals who hold a high school equiva-
lent were supposed to be coded as high
school graduates in the decennial census
and other Census Bureau surveys.
Analysis of selected data sources indi-
cates that this was not always the case.
Be it due to respondent or interviewer er-
ror, there are numerous instances (about

Exhibit 1. Educational items as contained in the "old" and the "new" CPS

fdte in th mevith AND hor
degen Sn math 34 Tthor 8th gt

(a) "Old" CPS (b) "New" CPS
[Whats the highest grad Whats the highest oval 31 Less than 1st grade

nh 32 ot, 2nd, 3/4, or Ath grade
sBasreaiest | | 33. sthor 6h grade

(36 Sth grade
Ee nm
Lb La] | 38 12m er0d0 no orptoma

39 HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE — high
school DIPLOMA, or the equivalent
{For exampie: GED)

EDUCATION CODES FOR 23

40. Some collage but no degree

41 Associate degree in collage —
Ocei ial/vocational program

degree in college —

42 Assi
Academic

43. Bacholor’s degras (For example: BA,
AB, BS)
44 Master’
‘MS, MEng,
arate sett
le

opr (Fox example: MA
a

46

{For oxerples PRD, E40)

Monthly Labor Review September 1993 35

Oe


Research Summaries

1 million persons in the February 1990
cps test) in which number of school years
completed have been recorded instead of
the fact that a high school equivalent was
earned.

An associated problem is the growing
number of persons who have completed
12 years of school, but who do not have a
high school diploma. This problem is es-
pecially common in areas that require a
final graduation test or certification. In-
dividuals who fail this test but have com-
pleted their 12 years are free to leave
school, but are not awarded a high school
diploma. Instead they often are given a
“certificate of completion” or other
document to indicate that they have
“served their time.” The February 1990
test showed that nearly 4 million people
fell into this category.

The old questionnaire design did not
meet agency and programmatic data
needs.

As partof the content development for
the 1990 Decennial Census, interagency
working groups were formed for each
substantive topic area. These groups met
to discuss specific agency data needs, re-
flecting programmatic and legislative
data requirements, as well as a full array
of research and analytic needs, The Edu-
cation working group identified the need
for degree-specific data as the highest pri-
ority item, and suggested potential item
response categories. This process also re-
vealed that detailed attainment informa-
tion was not legislatively required (or
generally needed) below the fifth grade.
The group suggested that the collapsing
of lower levels of schooling into broader
categories would not be a serious loss.
Faced with the addition of new categories
beyond the high school level, and a seri-
ous space constraint in the decennial
census survey instrument, the decision
was made to use collapsed categories of
first through fourth and fifth through
eighth grades; discussions with the Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics in the develop-
ment of the attainment item for the crs led
to establishment of separate categories
for fifth through sixth grade and seventh
through eighth grade.

Potential problems with change

The switch to the new attainment item is
somewhat controversial. One major ob-

jection has been raised regarding the loss
in continuity with time series that date
back as far as 50 years. On one level this
argument must be accepted; the new
item, after all, is different in terms of
both structure and wording and the range
of possible response categories. One
must remember, however, that the mean-
ing of the old question itself did not re-
main constant over the past 50 years—
that is, in fact, a primary reason why it
needed to be changed. “Years of school-
ing completed” does not connote the
same thing now that it did in 1940. In that
year, one could say with a high degree of
certainty that a person with 4 years of
college completed had a Bachelors de-
gree, but that same assertion could not be
made in 1990. To use the old item today
and attribute the 1940 meaning to the re-
sults would be misleading, and the prob-
lem would become more serious with
each passing year.

The new item, on the other hand, does
allow comparable construction of many
of the educational attainment concepts
and benchmarks that are frequently used
in research, analysis, and devising legis-
lation. Persons with less than a high
school degree, for example, can easily be
identified, including the 12th grade
“completers” who are not graduates.
Persons with college yielding less (or
more) than a Bachelors degree also can
be determined—as, obviously, can those
who have attained a Bachelors as their
highest degree. In this respect, the new
item provides better year-to-year compa-
rability, because it relies on known de-
gree levels rather than inference of de-
gree status from years of schooling.

A second source of concern is cited
by some researchers who feel that one of
their independent variables of choice for
regression models has been lost. While it
is true that the apparent continuous form
of the years-of-schooling item made the
educational data a handy (and empiri-
cally useful) addition to many regression
models of subjects such as earnings and
employment, most analysts would rec-
ognize that the estimates yielded by the
old item do not reflect the reality of
credentialing and the rewards based
thereon. In fact, a perusal of the literature
shows that in most empirical analyses
years of schooling is summarized into a
small set of convenient educational
benchmarks, generally represented by

36 Monthly Labor Review September 1993

binary (dummy) variables. (For ex-
ample, a code of ‘0° could indicate that
an individual did not have a college de-
gree, while a code of ‘1’ would mean that
a degree had been earned.) Analyses
such as these are commonplace, particu-
larly in the context of the growing use of
categorical data methods during the past
decade.

A related concern for some analysts is
the elimination of summary measures,
such as median or average years of
schooling completed. While these ynea-
sures will no longer be derivable in the
same metric, this may not be a major
analytical loss. During the entire decade
of the 1980’s, median years of schooling
for persons aged 25 and older changed
by 0.2—from 12.5 to 12.7 years—point-
ing up the fact that the median is not a
very good summary measure of the pace
of change in educational attainment. The
tabulation below shows four different
summary measures, including the me-
dian. Note that the three proportionate.
measures all tell a much different story
than does the median about how levels of
educational attainment changed over the
16-year period 1975-91:

Measure 1975 1991

Median years of

schooling ......... 12.3 12.7
Percent high school

graduates ......... 625 78.4
Percent with | year

of college or more ... 26.3 39.8
Percent with 4 years

of college or more . . . 13.9 214

While the change in the attainment ques-
tion will cause the loss of the time series of
median years of schooling, one would be
hard pressed to explain the utility of
keeping a measure that almost totally
misses the dynamic in the Nation’s
changing educational structure.

February 1990 crs results

As indicated earlier, a test of the new
educational attainment item was con-
ducted in the February 1990 cps. The
conventional years-of-schooling ques-
tion, which was still on the control
card—the portion of the survey instru-
ment that remained with the household
throughout its participation in the sur-
vey—was updated at the beginning of
the interview for all persons. After
completion of the regular cps-1 labor

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