Missing data for a particular question or item is called item nonresponse. It occurs when a respondent fails to provide an answer to a required item. The ACS also considers invalid answers as item nonresponse. The Census Bureau uses imputation methods that either use rules to determine acceptable answers or use answers from similar housing units or people who provided the item information. One type of imputation, allocation, involves using statistical procedures, such as within-household or nearest neighbor matrices populated by donors, to impute for missing values.

The aggregate number of vehicles used in commuting is derived by counting each person who drove alone as occupying one vehicle, each person who reported being in a two-person carpool as occupying one-half of a vehicle, each person who reported being in a three-person carpool as occupying one-third of a vehicle, and so on, then summing all the vehicles. This aggregate is used in the calculation for "workers per car, truck, or van."

Workers per car, truck, or van is a ratio obtained by dividing the aggregate number of workers who reported using a car, truck, or van to get to work by the number of such vehicles that they used. Workers per car, truck, or van is rounded to the nearest hundredth. This measure also may be known as "Workers per private vehicle."