The data on place of birth were derived from answers to Question 7. Respondents were asked to select one of two categories:
(1) in the United States, or
(2) outside the United States. In the American Community Survey, respondents selecting category
(1) were then asked to report the name of the state while respondents selecting category
(2) were then asked to report the name of the foreign country, or Puerto Rico, Guam, etc. In the Puerto Rico Community Survey, respondents selecting category
(1) were also asked to report the name of the state, while respondents selecting category
(2) were then asked to print Puerto Rico or the name of the foreign country, or U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, etc. People not reporting a place of birth were assigned the state or country of birth of another family member, or were allocated the response of another individual with similar characteristics. People born outside the United States were asked to report their place of birth according to current international boundaries. Since numerous changes in boundaries of foreign countries have occurred in the last century, some people may have reported their place of birth in terms of boundaries that existed at the time of their birth or emigration, or in accordance with their own national preference.

Data on language spoken at home were derived from answers to the 2008 American Community Survey Questions 13a and 13b. These questions were asked only of persons 5 years of age and older. Instructions mailed with the American Community Survey questionnaire instructed respondents to mark "Yes" on Question 13a if they sometimes or always spoke a language other than English at home, and "No" if a language was spoken only at school - or if speaking was limited to a few expressions or slang. For Question 13b, respondents printed the name of the non-English language they spoke at home. If the person spoke more than one non-English language, they reported the language spoken most often. If the language spoken most frequently could not be determined, the respondent reported the language learned first.

Questions 13a and 13b referred to languages spoken at home in an effort to measure the current use of languages other than English. This category excluded respondents who spoke a language other than English exclusively outside of the home.

Most respondents who reported speaking a language other than English also spoke English. The questions did not permit a determination of the primary language of persons who spoke both English and another language.

An automated computer system coded write-in responses to Question 13b into more than 380 detailed language categories. This automated procedure compared write-in responses with a master computer code list - which contained approximately 55,000 previously coded language names and variants - and then assigned a detailed language category to each write-in response. The computerized matching assured that identical alphabetic entries received the same code. Clerical coding categorized any write-in responses that did not match the computer dictionary. When multiple languages other than English were specified, only the first was coded.
The write-in responses represented the names people used for languages they spoke. They may not have matched the names or categories used by professional linguists. The categories used were sometimes geographic and sometimes linguistic. The following table provides an illustration of the content of the classification schemes used to present language data.
Four and Thirty-Nine Group Classifications of Languages Spoken at Home with Illustrative Examples

Four-Group Classification	Thirty-nine Group Classification	Examples
Spanish	Spanish or Spanish Creole	Spanish, Ladino, Pachuco
Other Indo-European languages	French	French, Cajun, Patois
	French Creole	Haitian Creole
	Italian	Italian
	Portuguese or Portuguese Creole	Portuguese, Papia Mentae
	German	German, Luxembourgian
	Yiddish	Yiddish
	Other West Germanic languages	Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, Afrikaans
	Scandinavian languages	Danish, Norwegian, Swedish
	Greek	Greek
	Russian	Russian
	Polish	Polish
	Serbo-Croatian	Serbo-Croatian, Croatian, Serbian
	Other Slavic languages	Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian
	Armenian	Armenian
	Persian	Persian
	Gujarathi	Gujarathi
	Hindi	Hindi
	Urdu	Urdu
	Other Indic languages	Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Romany
	Other Indo-European languages	Albanian, Gaelic, Lithuanian,Rumanian
Asian and Pacific Island languages	Chinese	Cantonese, Formosan, Mandarin
	Japanese	Japanese
	Korean	Korean
	Mon-Khmer, Cambodian	Mon-Khmer, Cambodian
	Hmong	Hmong
	Thai	Thai
	Laotian	Laotian
	Vietnamese	Vietnamese
	Other Asian languages	Dravidian languages (Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil),Turkish
	Tagalog	Tagalog
	Other Pacific Island languages	Chamorro, Hawaiian, Ilocano, Indonesian, Samoan
All other languages	Navajo	Navajo
	Other Native North American languages	Apache, Cherokee, Dakota, Pima, Yupik
	Hungarian	Hungarian
	Arabic	Arabic
	Hebrew	Hebrew
	African languages	Amharic, Ibo, Twi, Yoruba, Bantu, Swahili, Somali
	Other and unspecified languages	Syriac, Finnish, Other languages of the Americas, not reported

Respondents who reported speaking a language other than English were asked to indicate their English-speaking ability based on one of the following categories: "Very well," "Well," "Not well," or "Not at all." Ideally, the data on ability to speak English represented a person's perception of their own English-speaking ability. However, because one household member usually completes American Community Survey questionnaires, the responses may have represented the perception of another household member. Respondents were not instructed on how to interpret the response categories in Question 13c.

The data on age were derived from answers to Question 4. The age classification is based on the age of the person in complete years at the time of interview. Both age and date of birth are used in combination to calculate the most accurate age at the time of the interview. Inconsistently reported and missing values are assigned or imputed based on the values of other variables for that person, from other people in the household, or from people in other households ("hot deck" imputation). Data on age are used to determine the applicability of other questions for a particular individual and to classify other characteristics in tabulations. Age data are needed to interpret most social and economic characteristics used to plan and analyze programs and policies. Therefore, age data are tabulated by many different age groupings, such as 5-year age groups.

People may have chosen to provide two or more races either by checking two or more race response check boxes, by providing multiple responses, or by some combination of check boxes and write-in responses. The race response categories shown on the questionnaire are collapsed into the five minimum races identified by the OMB, and the Census Bureau's "Some other race" category. For data product purposes, "Two or More Races" refers to combinations of two or more of the following race categories:
1. White
2. Black or African American
3. American Indian and Alaska Native
4. Asian
5. Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
6. Some other race

There are 57 possible combinations (see below) involving the race categories shown above. Thus, according to this approach, a response of "White" and "Asian" was tallied as two or more races, while a response of "Japanese" and "Chinese" was not because "Japanese" and "Chinese" are both Asian responses.

1. White; Black or African American
2. White; American Indian and Alaska Native
3. White; Asian
4. White; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
5. White; Some other race
6. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native
7. Black or African American; Asian
8. Black or African American; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
9. Black or African American; Some other race
10. American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian
11. American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
12. American Indian and Alaska Native; Some other race
13. Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
14. Asian; Some other race
15. Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
16. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native
17. White; Black or African American; Asian
18. White; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
19. White; Black or African American; Some other race
20. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian
21. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
22. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Some other race
23. White; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
24. White; Asian; Some other race
25. White; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
26. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian
27. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
28. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Some other race
29. Black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
30. Black or African American; Asian; Some other race
31. Black or African American; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
32. American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
33. American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Some other race
34. American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
35. Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
36. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian
37. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
38. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Some other race
39. White; Black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
40. White; Black or African American; Asian; Some other race
41. White; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
42. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
43. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Some other race
44. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
45. White; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
46. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
47. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Some other race
48. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
49. Black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
50. American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
51. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
52. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Some other race
53. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
54. White; Black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
55. White; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
56. Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race
57. White; Black or African American; American Indian and Alaska Native; Asian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; Some other race

Given the many possible ways of displaying data on two or more races, data products will provide varying levels of detail. The most common presentation shows a single line indicating "Two or more races." Some data products provide totals of all 57 possible race combinations, as well as subtotals of people reporting a specific number of races, such as people reporting two races, people reporting three races, and so on. In other presentations on race, data are shown for the total number of people who reported one of the six categories alone or in combination with one or more other race categories. For example, the category, "Asian alone or in combination with one or more other races" includes people who reported Asian alone and people who reported Asian in combination with White, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and/or Some other race. This number, therefore, represents the maximum number of people who reported as Asian in the question on race. When this data presentation is used, the individual race categories will add to more than the total population because people may be included in more than one category.