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by the government’s fear that prior review systems would alienate the press and by the fact that readily available nonmilitary air transportation in the area would have rendered enforcement difficult. However, there is credible evidence that military officials systematically misrepresented progress by the United States during the war and that media routines and practices rendered them susceptible to this manipulation (Hallin 1986).

Despite the consensus on the need for some form of press management system to protect the lives of soldiers during wartime, controversies arise over the scope and mechanisms of enforcement.

Of particular concern to press and public is the fear that controls ostensibly designed to protect the lives of soldiers are used instead to manage public opinion at home.

PORNOGRAPHY

The term pornography comes from the Greek words for ‘‘prostitute’’ and ‘‘write,’’ and originally referred to writings about prostitutes and their activities. Today, pornography is broadly used to mean material with explicit sexual content. Like the word censorship itself, however, the definition of pornographic or obscene material is often contested. For example, feminist writers often draw a distinction between pornography, which combines sexuality with abuse or degradation, and erotica, which is sexually arousing material that respects the human dignity of the participants. A distinction is also sometimes drawn between hard-core pornography, which shows actual sexual intercourse or penetration, and soft-core pornography, which may be only suggestive of these activities.

Child pornography is prohibited in most nations, and restrictions on its production and distribution tend to be noncontroversial.

In the United States, the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970) and the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (1986) have provided recommendations for government action regarding pornography. The first report suggested that pornography should not be regulated by law, while the second rejected the claims that pornographic material was harmless and urged prosecution especially for materials that contained violence or degradation. These differing conclusions highlight the ongoing tensions between individual rights and perceived community needs, as

well as changes in the progress and interpretation of research on the effects of pornography. The uses of the conclusions drawn in these and other social-scientific reports are of particular sociological interest. For example, the Nixon Administration was quick to dismiss the conclusions of a report (which it had itself commissioned) that were contrary to its political goals. Here, as in other contested areas of expression, the political climate in which research findings are interpreted is often the deciding factor in how research is used.

Regarding the related question of obscenity, in 1973 the Supreme Court (Miller v. California,

413, U.S. 15, 1973) established three criteria for determining whether a given work was obscene:

An average person, applying contemporary local community standards, finds that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest; the work depicts in a patently offensive way sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and the work in question lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Political struggles over the regulation of pornography have been especially intriguing because they have brought together conservatives and feminists, groups traditionally on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Although both sides may support banning pornography, they have different reasons for doing so, and the scope of the material they wish to have regulated differs as well. Feminists focus on the degrading character of pornography, whereas conservatives view pornography as morally corrosive. Antipornography activists such as Catherine MacKinnon have defined pornography as a civil rights issue, arguing that pornography itself is a form of sexual discrimination; by presenting women in dehumanizing ways, pornography subordinates them.

Although there is wide variation in pornographic content, pornography often presents what many consider to be an unrealistic view of sexual relations. Encounters take place most often between strangers, not in the context of enduring relationships; participants are sex objects rather than complete individuals. Sexual activity always results in ecstasy, and consequences (such as pregnancy or disease) are nonexistent.

Empirical research on the effects of pornography has shown a range of negative effects. In

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typical experimental studies, participants are randomly assigned to pornographic stimuli or nonpornographic stimuli, and their attitudes, behaviors, or physiological reactions are then assessed. There are also paradigms assessing prolonged exposure, including ones in which participants return to the laboratory for multiple sessions of exposure to pornography, to better simulate reallife consumption patterns. Among other effects, studies have shown that after exposure to pornography, participants viewed rape as a less serious crime, overestimated the popularity of less common sexual practices, and showed greater callousness toward women. Furthermore, pornography consumers have shown weaker beliefs in the desirability of marriage and having children, and stronger beliefs in the normality of sexual promiscuity. Ironically, pornography has also been shown to reduce viewers’ satisfaction with their own sex lives and partners.

Although these outcomes have been found in a variety of studies using different research procedures, not all studies have confirmed these findings. Some critics of this research argue that rape and other antisocial sexual behavior existed even before pornography became widely available, and that forces besides pornography play a greater causal role in antisocial behavior. Others argue that the increased levels of aggression, hostility, or bias often found in experimental studies of pornography might be traced to differences between the experimental and naturalistic environments in which pornography is viewed: particularly, it is argued that these effects may be due to the lack of opportunity for men to ejaculate in the experimental setting. They also caution that the political biases of investigators may influence the interpretation of results. Others believe that even if the effects research is accurate, the costs of suppressing pornographic material—as measured in state encroachment on individual autonomy—outweigh any benefits that might be gained.

An argument sometimes raised for controlling or eliminating pornography in the form of images (rather than words) is that the individuals pictured in the pornographic photos and films suffered harm or coercion during the creation of the materials. A counterpoint to this argument is provided by Stoller and Levine (1993), who have

conducted in-depth ethnographic style interviews with producers, performers, and other employees in the pornography industry. In this work, the researchers allowed the people who create pornography to speak in their own words, providing both defenses of pornography and insight into why individuals choose, for better or for worse, to work in the pornography industry.

HATE SPEECH

From the advent of the printing press onward, most efforts to legally regulate expression have focused on various forms of mass communication.

Efforts to restrict speech can also target communication in interpersonal settings. One such example can be found in attempts to place legal limits on hate speech; defined as harassing or intimidating remarks that derogate the hearer’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

Those who support regulating hate speech compare it to ‘‘fighting words,’’ a category of speech not protected by the First Amendment, or argue that it creates a ‘‘hostile environment,’’ which violates provisions of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1990. Champions of hate speech regulations cite the harms its victims suffer: these may range from feelings of exclusion from a community, to the experience of debasement that leads students to skip classes or distress that leads them to leave school. In short, the liberty of a speaker to harass may deny the hearer’s right to equality. Critics of hate speech codes cite the administrative excesses they allow. For example, the student guide to the University of Michigan code stated that students could be punished for making a comment ‘‘in a derogatory way about someone’s appearance.’’

Following an increase in reported incidents of hate speech in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many universities in the United States adopted policies forbidding discriminatory verbal harassment. However, as they affect public institutions, these rules have been declared unconstitutional in the courts, in part for being either too broad— affecting too many forms of speech—or for being viewpoint based (see above).

The problems inherent in drafting laws that affect only the speech these rules target can be

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seen in comparing the provisions of the University of Michigan code with provisions in the bill advanced by Senator Jesse Helms to limit what kinds of works could receive funding from the National

Endowment for the Arts. Among the Helms bill’s other planks (aimed at homoerotic art, for example), it sought to prohibit funding of ‘‘material which denigrates . . . a person, group, or class of citizens on the basis of race, creed, sex, age . . .’’ Similarly, the Michigan code sought to bar speech that ‘‘stigmatizes or victimizes an individual on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex . . .’’ and also ‘‘creates a hostile environment.’’ The projects targeted by the Helms bill included one with a crucifix immersed in a bottle of urine. This work could also be a violation of the Michigan code if it were to be hung in an area frequented by offended

Christians. Difficulties of this sort have prompted those supporting hate speech codes to argue that this is one area in which viewpoint-based speech regulations should be allowed: that, similar to laws in Germany that selectively ban Holocaust denial, speech laws in the United States should be allowed to account for the history of discrimination experienced by some groups, but not others. Critics say that viewpoint discrimination of this sort would open the floodgates for future laws that selectively target viewpoints that happen to be deemed undesirable.

The hate speech debates highlight a fundamental dilemma faced by modern democracies: to what extent are we willing to tolerate speech whose very goal is to silence the speech of others, or to deny their rights to equal education or employment? Efforts continue to craft codes that are narrow in scope and that meet constitutional muster, with even staunch civil libertarians favoring prosecution when hate speech poses a clear and present danger of violence (e.g., Smolla 1992).

The hate speech debates also mark a significant turn in the rhetoric of ‘‘censorship,’’ one in which advocates of speech codes have attempted to enlist the power of this term in their favor. This rhetorical strategy is exemplified by the argument of Catharine MacKinnon, one of the staunchest code supporters, that ‘‘the operative definition of censorship . . . shifts from government silencing what powerless people say, to powerful people violating powerless people into silence and hiding behind state power to do it’’ (1993, p. 10).

BATTLES FOR CONTROL OVER SCHOOL

CURRICULA

Schools are the arena in which the values of open deliberation and the constructive exchange of ideas are most prized in democratic societies. It is with some irony, then, that schools are also the domain in which some of the most concerted efforts to limit the scope of deliberation have been focused. The content of textbooks used by most students in the United States has been selectively tailored to the ideological viewpoints of organized pressure groups, and at least one-third of high school students are not exposed to books and films that parents and pressure groups have successfully purged from their educational experience (Davis 1979).

From the vantage point of most teachers, parental and school board mandates to omit works of literature from the curriculum are viewed as illegitimate challenges to their expertise and infringements on their rights as professionals. In effect, teachers believe that they are in the best positions to judge the educational needs of the students they teach. However, the tradition of academic freedom that characterizes both public and private universities is rarely present in elementary and secondary education. Public school curricula are generally approved by the state or by school boards that actively regulate what is taught and what students read. School board members tend to be elected to their positions and are particularly responsive to what teachers view as unreasonable censorial demands.

Parents, on the other hand, see their interventions in the school curricula as a legitimate exercise of control over what their children read in school. They justify their decision, in part, with respect to the compulsory nature of early schooling, where they see their children as captive audiences. A number of well-funded organizations have exerted strong influences on both school boards and textbook adoption processes to influence what does and does not gain entry to the schoolroom.

In money terms, the largest impact of pressure groups has been on textbook publication and adoptions. Most states place orders for textbooks for schools in the entire state. Because publishers cannot provide multiple versions for different regions or states, texts are geared to the largest

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markets, usually Texas and California (Del Fattore 1992). As a result, publishers provide their writers with guidelines that govern topics and viewpoints that are currently deemed objectionable (or desirable) in the largest states that engage in statewide adoptions. In this way, pressure groups in one state, such as Texas, often exercise veto power over the entire country’s textbook market. Local communities in small and mid-size states exercise a relatively small influence on content.

Community protest and lawsuits are the principal vehicles used to challenge textbooks and reading lists in literature, social studies, and health education. An illustrative controversy—at McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona in 1996—high- lights the susceptibility of teachers and schools to parental and community demands. In this case, a parent of a McClintock High student protested the assignment of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because the word ‘‘nigger’’ is included in its dialogue. In the ensuing controversy, some held that if schools were forced to shield students from exposure to the term, such intervention would undermine the legitimate authority of teachers and would endorse ignorance of American history and the practice of censorship.

We may ask whether the students grasp the distinctions among Twain’s stance on racism, the use of the term ‘‘nigger’’ by a character in the novel, and societal endorsement of the term then and today. Of course the crux of such conflicts also rests upon the educational and social contexts in which sensitive, taboo, or potentially affronting topics that appear in the world of fiction are discussed. For instance, if The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or any other literature is misused to communicate racism, the problem is larger than the choice of which books are read in the classroom.

Unfortunately, the social context of this controversy added complexity. School benches at the same high school were etched with the words ‘‘I hate niggers.’’ Of course, there is an important distinction between eliminating the word ‘‘nigger’’ from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and removing ‘‘I hate niggers’’ from a school bench.

The etching creates a hostile educational and social environment in a way that the assignment of book should not do, as long as teachers and schools are doing their jobs well. In controversy after controversy, these distinctions are as important as

they have been difficult to establish. Often teachers simply capitulate to perceptions of the most conservative or protective community elements and use readings that are sure to be ‘‘safe’’ (Davis 1979).

In 1990s most lawsuits were mounted by fundamentalists who condemned many books on school lists as anti-Christian, antiparent, antigovernment, immoral, and obscene. The challenged books change from year to year, but frequently banned books have included Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck), Catch 22 (Heller), and Catcher in the Rye (Salinger). Fundamentalists are effective out of all proportion to their numbers because of the intense dedication they bring to their cause.

Research has yet to provide a sound basis for confidently assessing the effects of reading on school children’s beliefs. When a story contains a character’s arguments against the existence of God, might students question their faith? Qualitative research, particularly, has shown that students take widely divergent readings from stories and that these understandings are frequently critical of the viewpoints adopted by both characters and writers.

Can we maintain that literature gives readers insights into life? That it can change lives? Par- ents—former pupils, after all—have been encouraged to believe that great works contain great truths. It is not surprising that some of those parents who discern arguments against the social order in their children’s readings seek to eliminate the threat from children’s lives. Eventually, these ongoing and recurring controversies may be illuminated by scientifically grounded understanding of the social and cognitive foundations of narrative impact (Green, Strange, and Brock 2000).

One of the strongest arguments for keeping school curricula open to ideas to which we currently object or to heinous artifacts of historical prejudices is that one of the important functions of education is the development of critical inquiry.

From this perspective, to turn the schoolhouse into an environment where only ‘‘safe’’ ideas are encountered is to do students and society a disservice. This position is rendered more compelling in the context of the current media landscape which makes it certain that students will also encounter these ideas outside the context of a critical learning environment. This argument, of course,

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rests on the assumption that schools are, in fact, places where critical inquiry is fostered.

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ‘‘CENSORSHIP’’

When information (e.g. a book, a film, a speech, etc.) is explicitly ‘‘censored’’ do people desire that information much less—in accordance with the presumed intention of the censoring agents? Are people less likely to be influenced by a point of view when its expression has been prohibited by those in authority? To answer such questions, the impact of the label ‘‘censored’’ can be studied experimentally by exposing people to a communication (or a ‘‘taste’’ of a communication) to which ‘‘censored’’ is affixed and by then observing the consequences of such a juxtaposition of label and communication on their values and beliefs. When this careful experimental work has been done, the answer to both of these questions is ‘‘no.’’ Numerous experiments have shown that explicit censorship often backfires: the prohibition of communications leads people to covet them and to change their attitudes in the directions the censored material advocates.

A social-commodity theory (Brock 1968) accounts for the backfire effect of censorship in terms of the psychology of supply and demand. All public communications are perceived to have some limits on their distribution, and message recipients usually have some dim awareness of the extent of these limits. However, if the distribution is explicitly limited by government statute, or other overt interventions, awareness of scarcity is sharply heightened and the desirability and impact of the communication are consequently increased. When some information becomes less available, this unavailability augments the information’s value. A decrease in supply causes an increase in demand, and perceived censorship invariably entails a perceived decrease in supply.

Experimental social psychology has illuminated the impact of censorship by showing that (a) an individual can be influenced by a censored communication, even without actually receiving it, (b) the backfire effect increases as the penalties for violating censorship are increased; and, somewhat paradoxically, (c) the backfire effect is greater when the prohibition applies selectively to one group of people. For example, for a seventeen

year old, a film that was prohibited to persons under eighteen years of age would be more desirable than a film that was prohibited to all persons. In the former case, the censorship has more impact because it is viewed as violating a personal freedom; freedom to view a film is more threatened if there are many other people (all persons over eighteen years, say) who do have that freedom.

The experimentally grounded insights from social psychology—that explicit censorship usually doesn’t work as planned, and that it often back- fires—is often not factored into the planning and interventions of censoring agents. In some instances this may be good, as it reduces the effectiveness of those who attempt to limit information that is vital to public deliberation. In some instances, public information officers appear to have become aware that perceptions of censorship can hamper their efforts. In the 1970s, the Department of Defense directed that the term be completely dropped. This seemingly cosmetic change affects the way news coverage labels the sources of news reports: what was once attributed to the Office of Censorship, became, during the Gulf

War, a report from the Joint Information Bureau.

Research on related forms of content advisory labels, such as ‘‘parental discretion advised,’’ ‘‘viewer discretion advised,’’ and the more specific codes signaling levels of violence, nudity, sex, and profanity on television, has begun to reveal the extent to which different kinds of labels affect the selection choices of boys and girls of different ages

(Cantor and Harrison, 1994–1995). In several cases, these studies have revealed a ‘‘backfire’’ or ‘‘forbidden fruit’’ effect similar to the pattern found in reactions to the censorship label. The finding that restricted materials become more attracted—which depended on age, gender, and the kinds of labels used—have been extended to video game and music advisories.

Advocates of requiring such labels argue that their goal is not to limit communication at its source, but rather to provide parents and children a greater degree of control over their communication choices. Some critics argue that, regardless of intent, these labels lead producers to alter their productions in order to avoid undesirable labeling. As with the ‘‘censored’’ label, the effects on consumption of the targeted content will depend not only on how the label affects desirability of the

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materials, but also on the ultimate availability of the labeled content. If parents use advisory labels to preselect their children’s television viewing choices, these labels will effectively place greater selective control in the hands of parents. The probability that parents will do so is heightened by technologies like the ‘‘V-chip,’’ through which parental choices can be automated. Similar labels may have a much different effect on the selection of music and video games, where children are more likely to make their own media selections.

Research has also begun to examine the social and psychological origins of calls to restrict deemed harmful to children or to society at large. Studies of the ‘‘third person effect’’ suggest that support for restrictions on such content may sometimes be grounded in systematic overestimates of the effects of media on other persons. Sociological treatments of the rise of public alarm are particularly relevant here. Nicola Beisel’s (1992) account of the late-ninteenth-century attack on obscenity that resulted in the highly suppressive Comstock Laws is one example of a fruitful direction that research might take.

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Whereas most democratic nations have codified and enforced protections against the most blatant forms of government suppression of sociopolitical speech, governments around the world continue to engage in harsh repression. The bounty placed on the life of Salman Rushdie in retribution for his book, The Satanic Verses, is a well-publicized instance of the most egregious form of governmentsanctioned repression. However, a variety of both legal and extra-legal tactics continue to be used worldwide to protect those in power. To cite just two typical examples from 1999: A court in Kazakhstan suspended publication of an opposition newspaper for the three months preceding presidential elections on the pretext that it failed to indicate the place of printing on its masthead; and, shortly after the director of the Cameroon newspaper Le Messager-Populi was released from a ten-month prison sentence for spreading ‘‘false information,’’ the paper’s founder was driven from the country upon threats to his life (see generally, Webb and Bell 1998). Typical extra-legal means of suppressing speech critical of the government include awarding and withdrawing governmental

advertising contracts, the licensing of journalists, controls on distribution of newsprint, and, more generally, government ownership and control of broadcast media.

Controls at the site of reception provide another means of suppressing viewpoints that lack the official stamp of approval. For example, a number of countries pose outright bans on ownership of satellite receiving dishes. However, new technologies, particularly the Internet, pose serious threats to the control of political information by authoritarian regimes. The Internet’s impending threat is linked to the growing dependency upon computer-based communications in the marketplace. Authoritarian governments appear to be faced with a Hobson’s choice: allow connections to the vast and diverse information resources of the

Internet or face economic stagnation.

Particularly when looking beyond suppressive controls on political speech, it is important to recognize the distinction between governmentcontrolled media and government-funded media.

The BBC is but one example of the governmentfunded, public television stations that have developed reputations for independent news coverage that gives voice to diverse perspectives of both majority and minority interests. Publicly-subsidized television in Holland instantiates an intriguing model of ‘‘free speech’’ through a system that allots television channels and channel space on a proportional basis to key institutions and sociocultural groups. Public television stations in many

European nations seek independence from the demands of both government and marketplace through nongovernmental boards of trustees and through stable funding mechanisms not subject to annual tampering by politically driven legislatures.

INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION FLOW

A handful of news agencies, led by the Associated

Press (AP), Reuters, and Agence-France Presse dominate the news that people around the world read about issues and events originating outside their borders. The dominance of both print and broadcast news by a small group of companies is particularly felt in developing nations, ones lacking the capital to compete with the economies of scale enjoyed by entrenched foreign corporations. The concern generated in developing nations focuses not only on the news they receive from

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abroad, but also on the images that news agencies project about them. This concern is compounded by news agency values that typically stress largescale violence and disruption—’’coups and earthquakes’’ as the saying goes—and ignore the cultural achievements and developmental efforts for which these countries would like to be known.

Those who control international news flows view their position of dominance as a desirable and natural outcome of free-market practice. Those in developing nations view the imbalances as a form of de facto neo-imperialism. This view finds its historical roots in the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries, when three European news agencies, Havas (France), Wolff (Germany), and

Reuters (England) carved the world into three areas of monopoly control, ones that built upon their respective colonial empires. Some insight into the present-day perspective of developing nations can be gained by examining how news about the United States was communicated in the early part of the century. During those years, the ‘‘Ring Cartel’’ prevented AP from sending news about the United States beyond its borders. According to Kent Cooper, the AP manager who fought to dismantle it, the cartel decided ‘‘what the people of each nation would be allowed to know of the people of other nations and in what shade of meaning the news was to be presented.’’ It was Reuters who ‘‘told the world about Indians on the war path in the West, lynchings in the South, and bizarre crimes in the North. . . . The charge for years was that nothing credible to America was ever sent’’ (cited in Frederik 1993, p.39). To those in developing nations, it is the AP who now plays the role of cartel.

Several proposals have been advanced to correct the imbalance in international news flows.

Notable are those advanced through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These calls for a ‘‘New World Information Order’’ (NWIO) generated immediate and prolonged controversy, and provoked the United States to withdraw from UNESCO in 1985. The contours of these debates are as intriguing as they are complex, reflecting sharp differences in news values, international economic principles, and the very definition of ‘‘free speech.’’ Whereas NWIO supporters liken the values of developmental journalism to current trends in the United States, such

as ‘‘civic’’ journalism, its detractors suggest that the values of developmental journalism cater to the needs of local authority. And whereas NWIO critics argue for a ‘‘free flow’’ of information across international boundaries, NWIO supporters advocate a ‘‘balanced flow.’’ Although these issues remain unresolved, promising developments include the rise of regional news agencies, programs such as CNN’s World Report, in which locally produced broadcasts gain worldwide exposure; and prospects that the Internet will facilitate the international communication of locally produced news.

The increasing global dominance of U.S. movies and television programming have prompted the European Economic Community and Canada, among other regional and national entities, to seek ceilings on imported cultural goods as exceptions to free trade principles in international trade agreements. These demands reflect the belief that when applied to the area of expression, free market principles support forms of ‘‘soft’’ or ‘‘de facto censorship’’ in which locally produced speech is driven from the marketplace of ideas (cf. Frederik

1993). More generally, these demands reflect the growing tension between the ongoing course of globalization and the threats to cultural sovereignty it entails.

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and T.M.Ostrom, eds. Psychological Foundations of Attitudes. New York: Academic Press.

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Donnerstein, E., and S.L. Smith 1997. ‘‘Impact of Media Violence on Children, Adolescents, and Adults.’’ In S. Kirschner and D. A. Kirschner, Eds., Perspectives on Psychology and the Media. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

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Research Advances and Policy Considerations. Hillsdale,

NJ: Erlbaum.

JEFFREY J. STRANGE

MELANIE C. GREEN

TIMOTHY C. BROCK

CENSUS

A national census of population is ‘‘the total process of collecting, compiling, evaluating, analysing and publishing or otherwise disseminating demographic, economic, and social data pertaining, at a specified time, to all persons in a country’’ (United Nations 1988, p. 3). The United Nations encourages its members to take regular censuses and provides technical assistance. It also publishes an annual demographic yearbook and maintains a web site with selected census data and other population information for most countries.

A nation may conduct censuses on other subjects such as housing, business firms, agriculture, and local governments. Because of the close link between families and housing units, censuses of population and housing are usually combined.

The actual enumeration for a national population census is usually spread over a period of weeks

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or months, but an attempt is made to record circumstances as of a designated census day (April

1 for the 2000 U.S. census). In some censuses, persons are reported in their legal or usual place of residence (a de jure enumeration). According to the Bible, a census decree issued by the government in Rome ordered that persons be counted and taxed in their home towns. In response, Joseph and his pregnant wife, Mary, traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Mary gave birth to

Jesus. Other censuses record people where they are on the census day (a de facto enumeration). Whatever residency rule is followed, all conceivable special circumstances must be anticipated, questionnaires well designed, and census staff thoroughly trained.

The U.S. census uses the concept of ‘‘usual residence,’’ where the person lives and sleeps most of the time, but some exceptions are made. A few examples from the 2000 U.S. census illustrate the range of circumstances. Some persons staying in hotels and rooming houses are transients temporarily absent from their usual homes; they completed special census forms that were later compared to the census forms received from their home addresses to confirm that they were properly reported by other household members. An operation called ‘‘Service-Based Enumeration’’ was designed to locate homeless persons and others with no usual residence. College students were presumed to be residents at the place they lived while attending college, even if they were at home on spring break on census day. Efforts were made to avoid having an away-at-college child erroneously double-counted as a member of the home household. Pre-college students at away-from-home schools were assigned to the parental household. Citizens working in another country for the U.S. government, and their families, were enumerated (primarily through the use of administrative records), but other citizens living abroad at the census date were not counted. Short-term tourists, however, were supposed to be reported by other members of their households, or by late enumeration upon their return home. Persons not legally resident in the United States were supposed to be counted, but many feared all contact with authorities and took steps to avoid detection by census procedures.

The total population count is only one result of a modern census. Information is also obtained

on many characteristics, such as age, sex, and relationship to others living in the same household, educational level, and occupation. The census then reports on population size and characteristics for provinces, states, counties, cities, villages, and other administrative units. To obtain all this information, the 2000 U.S. census (U.S. Census Bureau 1999) asked every household to complete a ‘‘short form’’ with six questions about each person and one question about each housing unit. A carefully selected sample of one of every six households received a ‘‘long form’’ that included additional questions on fourteen topics for each person and thirteen topics for each housing unit.

Reporting information for the entire country and for the thousands of cities and other subareas results in many volumes of printed reports. Many nations issue additional data on computer-read- able files designed for convenient use by national and local governments, organizations, and individuals. Increasing quantities of data are available to anyone with access to the Internet.

In the United States, the idea for a regular census emerged during debates about the problems of creating a representative form of government. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 2) directs that membership in the House of Representatives be based on population: ‘‘The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.’’

The questions asked in a census reflect political and social issues of the day and often provoke spirited debates. For example, slavery was a recurrent divisive issue for the Constitutional Convention. One of the two newly created legislative bodies, the House of Representatives, was to have the number of legislators from each state proportional to the population of the state. Including slaves in the population count would increase the legislative power of southern states. A compromise (Article I, Section 2) provided that: ‘‘Representatives. . . shall be apportioned among the several states. . . according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.’’ The distinction between ‘‘free persons’’ and ‘‘all other

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persons’’ (slaves) was eliminated after the Civil War (Amendment 14, Section 2).

The 1790 census was modest in scope. Assistants to federal marshals made lists of households, recording for each household the number of persons in five categories: free white males over sixteen and under sixteen, free white females, other free persons, and slaves (Anderson 1988, p. 13).

Censuses from 1790 through 1840 were conducted with little central organization or statistical expertise. A temporary federal census office was established to conduct the 1850 census. The individual rather than the household became the focus of the enumeration, and the content of the census was expanded to include occupation, country or state of birth, and other items. Experienced statisticians were consulted, and the United States participated in the first International Statistical Congress in 1853.

The temporary office for the 1890 census became one of the largest federal agencies, employing 47,000 enumerators and 3,000 clerical workers. To help with the enormous task of tallying data, census officials supported the development by a young inventor, Herman Hollerith, of an electrical tabulating machine. His punchedcard system proved effective in census operations and later contributed to the growth of the IBM corporation.

A permanent census office was established in 1902. An increasingly professional staff assumed responsibility for the population censuses and a broad range of other statistical activities. Deficiencies in the federal statistical system became apparent during the 1930s as the nation tried to assess the effects of the Great Depression and to analyze an array of new programs and policies. Several federal agencies successfully advocated expansion of the social and economic content of the 1940 census. New questions in 1940 asked about participation in the labor force, earnings, education, migration (place of residence in 1935), and fertility. A housing census was paired with the population census to provide information about housing values and rents, mortgages, condition of dwellings, water supply, and other property issues. The practice of providing population and housing information for subareas of large cities was greatly expanded.

Governmental statistical agencies are often set in their ways, concerned with continuity rather than innovation and removed from the higher levels of policymaking. For several decades beginning in the late 1930s, the U.S. Census Bureau was extraordinarily creative. Social scientists and statisticians employed by the Census Bureau were active in research and scholarly publication and played leadership roles in professional organizations. Census Bureau personnel pioneered in development of the theory and practice of population sampling. To accommodate large increases in content and geographic scope, the 1940 census questionnaire was divided into two parts. A set of basic questions was asked of everyone, while a set of supplementary questions was asked of a one-in- twenty sample. Subsequent U.S. censuses have continued to use sampling, as with the ‘‘longform’’ versions of the 1990 and 2000 questionnaires that went to one of every six households.

Sampling theory was also applied to the development of periodic sample surveys to provide timely information between censuses and to provide information on additional topics.

For the 1950 census, the Bureau participated actively in the development and utilization of another new technology, the computer. In later censuses, the schedules were microfilmed and optically scanned for direct input of information (without names and addresses) into a computer for errorchecking, coding, and tabulating.

Through 1950, census enumeration in the

United States was accomplished almost entirely by having an enumerator conduct a personal interview with one or more members of each household and write the information on a special form. By 1990, most census questionnaires were distributed and returned to the Census Bureau by mail, with telephone follow-up replacing many personal visits. Large-scale use of the Internet and other innovative response technologies may be practicable for widespread use in the 2010 census.

National censuses have so far been the best method for obtaining detailed information about the entire population. Only censuses provide counts and characteristics for small administrative and statistical areas, such as villages, voting districts, city blocks, and census tracts. Only censuses provide reliable information on small population

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