It’s even printed right on the front of their house. Any nut case driving by can look at their house and get the address.
A co-worker was reluctant to fill out the census form, because she was afraid that people would find out that she was a single woman living alone. (I tried to explain to her that her record would be secret, but I’m not sure that she believed me.)
The purpose of this letter from the government, clearly, is to convince the people who don’t open letters from the government to open the next letter they receive from the government, because that one will be important. It’s the same idea behind my old high school playing a recorded message over the school’s closed-circuit TV channel telling the teachers to turn on their TVs to receive a recorded message.*
This must be a successful tactic, because the people involved decided to do it, and it follows that people don’t decide to do things that are not successful.** After all, if my school’s message got just 2% of teachers to turn on their TVs, why, that’s a couple dozen more students that receive the information that day, and 2 being a relatively small number on a scale of 1 to 100, doesn’t it seem reasonable that it would accomplish at least that?
*Yes, they actually did this. Routinely.
**God, I hate this argument. It’s never made a modicum of sense, yet it shows up pretty much anytime anyone questions some organization’s methods.
Sarcasm aside, it’s entirely possible to believe that this mailing was stupid without subscribing to any tinfoil-hat objections to the census at large (or other means of advertising same). It’s simply and solely that, if you are concerned that people will not take Action X, your method of asking them to do so probably shouldn’t require them to take Action X to receive the information.
I’ll agree, though, that it’s not even close to being anything to get upset about. Just have a chuckle, fill out the census form when it comes, and get on with life.
Sorry for the double-post, but in case it’s not clear from my above post (and it isn’t), I should add that I personally don’t think the mailing was stupid. The key is that people don’t behave rationally; a person might decide today to open THIS letter from the government, whereas three days later they might throw THAT identical-looking letter away. Thus, the mailing does increase the odds that any given individual will get the message.
My last post was just to point out that A) there’s a perfectly logical, non-nutter reason to object to the mailing, and B) I hate the ever-living crap out of the ubiquitous “they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work” argument.
WHERE did you get this phrase? I was a census enumerator in 2000. What excuse could someone have mustered then, hmmmmmm? 
I dawnt want that Clintin findin out where my womenfolk live!
There were four letter words strewn about the house when I got the pre-mailer. A waste of money. Thank God we have a racing car sponsored by the government to put icing on that cake of stupidity.
And First Prize for Not Reading the Thread Before Posting goes to . . .
I’m just agreeing with the sentiment of the op so you can either add to it or imagine which part of a horse I’m thinking you resemble.
That sentiment is quantifiably wrong. The mailers have a return on investment anywhere between 10:1 and 20:1.
Well a politician
said it so it must be true. Never mind the logic that nothing in the letter would spur anyone to action.
Well, clearly, nothing in the letter would spur you to action. It’s a bold assumption that, because it would not spur you to action, it would spur no one to action.
Eh, logic says that seeing a sexy woman holding a Budwiser on my TV shouldn’t make me more likely to go out and spend money on beer, but the Beer industry seems to be willing to bet millions of ad dollars that it will convince other people to go out and buy their product.
It’s got nothing to do with logic. It has to do with human behavior, which is totally illogical. And some humans need to be told to do something ten times before they finally remember to do it.
If it has a 10 to 1 payoff then we should be getting more letters (or does it only work once?).
I don’t want to sound cynical but maybe a management company slips the proverbial $20 to their favorite politician and gets a contract. It’s not like the government isn’t full of wasteful spending.
Here’s a (pdf) summary of the research on the effectiveness of pre-notice letters. The sample size was 50,000
I guess its not totally impossible some shadowy conspiracy of gov’t bureaucrats, Census Bureau sociologists, bribed politicians and “management companies(?)” faked the whole thing or rigged the results. But I suspect the real truth is that the federal gov’t is putting a lot of effort into saving taxpayer money by improving the efficency of the Census.
I live in an area with no home mail delivery. The pre-letter was delivered to my P.O. Box. I don’t remember if it was addressed to me or to “boxholder” or some such thing, but it assured be the Census form was coming IN THE MAIL. The actual Census form was hand-delivered (well, OK left hanging on the door handle in a plastic bag.)
I almost didn’t get it, as it was hanging on the front door (the one where the house number is.) Because of a strange lot/house setup and the location of the gravel right-of-way I use to park next to my house and not on the street, I don’t use that door. I only found it because it was really nice out one weekend and I’d had the door open to get some warm fresh air moving through.
I just got my post-census reminder!
I filled out the form and mailed it in…now the Feds are sending us another notice.
They could save a lot more money by figuring out ahead of time which people will be affected by reminders like this (as opposed to the ones who either will or won’t return their census forms regardless), and then sending them to just those people. Until that day comes, they’ll just need to keep sending them to everybody.
Yeah. To help figure it out, they could send out some sort of survey…