Minority Participation in Administration on Aging Programs

GAO discussed the Administration on Aging's (AOA) methodology for collecting data on minority participation, and its data collection methods employed in two other client tracking systems. GAO noted that: (1) the data collection instrument focused on participation in generic service categories instead of program participation; (2) AOA definitions of services lacked specificity and placed the burden on each state to decide on the appropriate categories; (3) the current data collection instrument's service categories are not comprehensive; (4) the AOA data collection instrument did not permit the generation of accurate counts of all participants, including minority participants; (5) AOA data collection procedures lacked participant identification numbers, had no guide for determining low-income and minority status, and lacked standardized data collection procedures; (6) two states had data collection systems that could measure participation in non-AOA programs and examine individual participation; (7) the two states' systems allow them to generate unduplicated counts of all participants, and facilitate their ability to determine minority and low-income status; and (8) the two states' data collection systems did not resolve the other problems associated with the national data on minority participation.