This Data Will Make You Question Every Census Record You've Collected

A useful article on interpreting data from censuses. Most of us ignore the "Instructions to Enumerators" and rush on to record the data themselves, but if we do that, the data can easily be misinterpreted. This Data Will Make You Question Every Census Record You've Collected:

At first glance Instructions to Enumerators sounds pretty benign — it certainly doesn’t sound like it should be shaking any foundations. But it turns out that these documents provide some very surprising insights into the data recorded in the US census. The Instructions to Enumerators specified for the census takers what information was to be collected for each census year, how to properly collect that information, what data should be questioned and what data should be excluded. The instructions put much of the information that we often take at face value into a whole new light. They provide a context to the information that could easily change how that information should be read, understood and used.