President Obama Picks Groves for Census

President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Robert M. Groves to be Director of the Bureau of the Census. Groves is Director of the University of Michigan Survey Research Center, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at its Institute for Social Research, and Research Professor at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, at the University of Maryland. From 1990-1992 Groves was an Associate Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, on loan from University of Michigan. From 1992-2001 he was the associate director, then director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, a graduate program sponsored by the US Federal statistical system. He is the author of seven books and scores of scientific articles concerning the improvement of surveys. He has researched why people participate in statistical surveys, worked to develop surveys with lower non-response errors and studied how data is collected for surveys. He would preside over an organization that has acknowledged that it may inadvertently miss counting several million people in urban areas and those displaced by the home foreclosure crisis. Republicans expressed alarm because of one of Mr. Groves's specialties, statistical sampling — roughly speaking, the process of extrapolating from the numbers of people actually counted to arrive at estimates of those uncounted and, presumably, arriving at a realistic total. If minorities, immigrants, the poor and the homeless are those most likely to be missed in an actual head count, and if political stereotypes hold true, then statistical sampling would presumably benefit the Democrats. Republicans have generally argued that statistical sampling is not as reliable as its devotees insist.