Census FAQs
Here are some of the frequent questions asked about the Census forms:
What questions are asked?
***The Census 2010 should take just minutes to complete and will ask the following:
- Name
- Sex
- Age and date of birth
- Race
- Relationship (How are the people in the household are related to each other?)
- Housing tenure (Is the home owned or rented?)
***The Census 2010 form will not ask about immigration status.
What if I don’t understand the form?
You can call a phone number on the back of the English form to request a questionnaire in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean or Russian. There will be language assistance guides in more than 50 additional languages, including Tagalog, Japanese, Khmer, Hindi, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Bengali and Urdu. The Census Bureau will make all these guides available online and can provide 22 of those language guides by mail. Telephone assistance center staff will also be able to answer questions in many other languages and TDD.
Will participating be harmful?
By law, all of the individual answers given on the Census are confidential. Responses and information cannot be shared with any person or any government agency, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Internal Revenue Services (IRS).
How are my information protected?
Federal law protects your information. The Census Bureau is bound by Title 13 of the United States Code. In addition, other federal laws, including the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act and the Privacy Act, reinforce these protections.
Protections provided by Title 13.
It is against the law to disclose or publish any private information that identifies an individual or business:
- No names
- No address
- No Social Security Numbers or Employer Identification Numbers
- No telephone numbers
The Census Bureau uses your information to produce statistics. Your personal information cannot be used against you by any government agency or court.
Every person with access to your information is sworn for life to protect your confidentiality. People sworn to uphold Title 13 are legally required to maintain the confidentiality of your data. Every person with access to your data is sworn for life to protect your information and understands that the penalties for violating this law are applicable for a lifetime.
