New Help Guide: American Housing Survey Dependent Interviewing: 2015 and Beyond

This past summer, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released a new help guide, American Housing Survey Dependent Interviewing: 2015 and Beyond. Dependent Interviewing is the process of using results from previous surveys to reduce respondent burden. The American Housing Survey (AHS) is a longitudinal survey where the same housing units are visited every 2 or 4 years and provides several opportunities to use dependent interviewing.

This help guide:

• Explains how HUD and the Census Bureau chose which questions are eligible for dependent interviewing in the 2015 (and later) surveys.

• Discusses the prior year responses that are eligible as a source of information for dependent interviewing.

• Describes the techniques used to implement dependent interviewing.

• Lists the dependent interviewing techniques used for questions for which answers appear in the AHS Public Use File (PUF).

Census and HUD routinely publish help guides for prior AHS surveys (1985-2013) and for the new surveys (2015 and later). These help guides can be found under technical documentation on the American Housing Survey section of census.gov. Topics included in available help documents cover geography, PUF/IUF, estimating variance and error, and other information.

Thank you for your continued interest in the American Housing Survey. The AHS team is committed to making it as easy as possible to access and use AHS data. We want to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions for developing other help guides, call us at 1-800-245-2691 or email us at helpdesk@huduser.gov.