DisabilityStatus
Sources: U.S.Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) and Puerto Rico Community Survey(PRCS), 5-Year Estimates. The PRCS is part of the Census Bureau's ACS, customized for Puerto Rico. BothSurveys are updated every year.
Definition
In anattempt to capture a variety of characteristics that encompass the definitionof disability, the ACS identifies serious difficulty with four basic areas offunctioning – hearing, vision, cognition, and ambulation. These functionallimitations are supplemented by questions about difficulties with selectedactivities from the Katz Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and LawtonInstrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) scales, namely difficultybathing and dressing, and difficulty performing errands such as shopping.Overall, the ACS attempts to capture six aspects of disability: (hearing,vision, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, and independent living); which can beused together to create an overall disability measure, or independently toidentify populations with specific disability types. For the complete definition,go to ACS subject definitions "DisabilityStatus."
Source andAccuracy
This Factis based on data collected in the American Community Survey (ACS) and thePuerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS) conducted annually by the U.S. CensusBureau. A sample of over 3.5 million housing unit addresses is interviewed eachyear over a 12 month period. This Fact (estimate) is based on five years of ACSand PRCS sample data and describes the average value of person, household andhousing unit characteristics over this period of collection.
Statisticsfrom all surveys are subject to sampling and nonsampling error. Sampling erroris the uncertainty between an estimate based on a sample and the correspondingvalue that would be obtained if the estimate were based on the entirepopulation (as from a census). Measures of sampling error are provided in theform of margins of error for all estimates included with ACS and PRCS publishedproducts. The Census Bureau recommends that data users incorporate thisinformation into their analyses, as sampling error in survey estimates couldimpact the conclusions drawn from the results. The data for each geographicarea are presented together with margins of error at Using margins of error. A more detailedexplanation of margins of error and a demonstration of how to use them isprovided below.
For moreinformation on sampling and estimation methodology, confidentiality, andsampling and nonsampling errors, please see the Multiyear Accuracy (US) and theMultiyear Accuracy (Puerto Rico) documents at "Documentation - Accuracy of the data."
Margin ofError
Asmentioned above, ACS estimates are based on a sample and are subject to samplingerror. The margin of error measures the degree of uncertainty caused bysampling error. The margin of error is used with an ACS estimate to construct aconfidence interval about the estimate. The interval is formed by adding themargin of error to the estimate (the upper bound) and subtracting the margin oferror from the estimate (the lower bound). It is expected with 90 percentconfidence that the interval will contain the full population value of theestimate. The following example is for demonstrating purposes only. Suppose theACS reported that the percentage of people in a state who were 25 years andolder with a bachelor's degree was 21.3 percent and that the margin of errorassociated with this estimate was 0.7 percent. By adding and subtracting themargin of error from the estimate, we calculate the 90-percent confidenceinterval for this estimate:
21.3% -0.7% = 20.6% => Lower-bound estimate
21.3% + 0.7% = 22.0% => Upper-bound estimate
Therefore,we can be 90 percent confident that the percent of the population 25 years andolder in a state having a bachelor's degree falls somewhere between 20.6percent and 22.0 percent.
For thisFact, its estimates and margins of error along with percents and percentmargins of errors can be found on American Community Survey, Data Profiles-Social Characteristics
MoreInformation