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Last Minute Call for AHS 2005 Suggestions

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We will soon be deciding on any new items to add to the 2005 national American Housing Survey. If you have any requests, please send them to me in the next two weeks. It wouldn't hurt to also post your suggestions to the mailing list, so that other users could see them and comment on them. Remember that if you just hit your "reply" button, your message will go only to me. In order to send a message to the entire list, you have to put AHS@huduser.gov in the address field.

Two important changes in the 2005 sample will be a new sample of manufactured housing and coverage of assisted living facilities (but not nursing homes). Any suggestions about those areas are particularly needed. However, we will consider limited changes to other parts of the instrument.

Remember that this is a housing unit survey. We must ask questions that the residents would reasonably be able to answer. We do not ask questions of managers or administrators. Thus, we cannot collect detailed information about mobile home parks or institutional details about assisted living facilities, unless it is information that the residents would know.

Please avoid open-ended questions. Answers should be "yes or no," a well-defined quantity (bedrooms, dollars, breakdowns in the past six months, etc.), or a selection from a small number of choices. If you are an expert in a field and want to know the number of housing units that have specific characteristics, please list them. If you make a general suggestion and let us work out the list of answers, you may find that we missed something that you consider to be important.

Finally, please realize that we do have to keep a constant watch on the length of the interview. Thus, we are not going to add a large battery of new questions. If you can pare your items to those that are especially important, you will have a much better chance of seeing them implemented. Feel free to add an explantion to us of why your items are important to collect. Again, if you rely on us to cut things down, we may not have the same priorities you have.

If you have already sent us suggestions, we still have what you sent us. You don't need to repeat yourself. Of course, if you have any additions or refinements (especially the latter), please feel free to send them to me.

Dav Vandenbroucke
Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-708-1060 ext. 5890