The year 2016 marked the launch of a totally revised set of questions on computer and internet use in the American Community Survey.

The Census Bureau generally keeps questions the same or similar to provide consistent measurement of trends over time. However, in this case, the evidence was strong that the old questions were not doing well at capturing internet access via “mobile broadband,” or cellular data plans.

When the new, revised questions were tested, there were many improvements, including a stunning increase in reported mobile broadband usage.

Figure 1 shows the old and new questions. More discussion of the changes is provided in a user note for the 2016 ACS data, and in a report on testing of the new questions.

