Hi there,
I wonder whether there is any information on the months in which responds are collected/recorded. Since there are several income variables asking that for the previous 12 months, it would be much helpful if there is any variable indicating in which months the responds are provided/collected/recorded.
Many thanks!
Unfortunately this information is not released in the public-use ACS files by the Census Bureau, and therefore IPUMS USA cannot provide the month of data collection.
Thank you very much Matthew!
From the website, it says “Each month a systematic sample is drawn to represent each U.S. county or county equivalent. The selected monthly sample is mailed the ACS survey at the beginning of the month. Nonrespondents are contacted via telephone for a computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) one month later. One third of the nonrespondents to the mail or telephone survey are contacted in person for a computer assisted personal interview (CAPI) one month following the CATI attempt.”
So I wondered whether it means that the sample within each year is equally split across each months, for example, there are 120 households in year 2000, it means that 12 households are surveyed in each month?
I believe that is the intent, but for various reasons I suspect the response rate varies throughout the year. This page gives response rates by state, and has notes on particular events that caused disruptions in data collection, though I do not see any data on responses by month. You might want to contact the Census Bureau directly about this.