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 Legal entity A geographic entity whose boundaries, name, origin, and political/statistical area description result from charters, laws, treaties, or other administrative or governmental action. In earlier censuses, often referred to as a political area or entity. Legal entities include States, counties, minor civil divisions, American Indian reservations, and Alaska Native Regional Corporations. See also administrative entity, governmental unit, political/statistical area description, statistical entity.

Legislative district An area from which a person is elected to serve in a State legislative body. See also voting district.

Linear feature A feature, such as a railroad, road, street, stream, pipeline, or boundary that can be represented by a line in a geographic data base. See also TIGER data base, visible feature.

Location A type of nonfunctioning MCD found in New Hampshire.

Long form The decennial census questionnaire, sent to approximately one in six households for the 1980 and 1990 censuses, that contains, in addition to all questions on the short form, detailed questions relating to the social, economic, and housing characteristics of each individual and household. Information derived from the long form is referred to as sample data, and is tabulated for geographic entities as small as the block group level in 1980 and 1990 census data products. See also block group, 100-percent data, sample data, short form.

MA See metropolitan area.

MA code The NIST issues numeric FIPS codes for MAs. FIPS codes for MSAs and PMSAs (and NECMAs) are four-digit codes; CMSAs are assigned two-digit FIPS codes. NIST also has made available an alternative set of four-digit codes for CMSAs. See also Federal Information Processing Standards, Geographic Identification Code Scheme.

MAF See Master Address File. GlossaryG-31