Research Plan

The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0725). We will be conducting cognitive research on the National Crime Victimization Survey, sponsored by the Department of Justice. We will be pretesting changes to the bi-annual School Crime Supplement for individual household members between the ages of 12 and 18 years old.

In June and July, staff from the Center for Survey Methods Research (CSMR) will conduct approximately 15 cognitive interviews. In our recruiting efforts we will be targeting children between the ages of 12 and 18 who have attended school in the last six months. We plan to interview participants who attend public or private schools and are from a variety of racial and ethnic groups. Respondents will be recruited through advertisements in local newspapers, contacts with local community organizations, and personal networks. We will also recruit people who are currently in our respondent database. Interviews will be conducted at the Census Bureau’s Response Research Laboratory, at the offices of community organizations used to recruit respondents, and at locations convenient to interviewees. The interviews will be conducted in the local metropolitan area (DC, Maryland, Virginia).

We will administer the questions in the enclosed questionnaire. The proposed changes to the questions are highlighted throughout the supplement.

We will be conduct our cognitive interviews using the concurrent think-aloud method. We will audio-tape the interviews, with participant or parental permission, to facilitate analysis of the results. For children under 18, parent’s will give the consent to participate, and children will give their assent to participate on the audio-tape. We will in form participants that their response is voluntary and that the information they provide is confidential and will be seen only by employees involved in the research project. Participants will receive $40 for their participation in this research. A copy of the parental and adult (18 year -old) consent forms is enclosed.

We estimate that these interviews will take approximately one hour. Thus, the total estimated burden for this research is 15 hours.

The contact person for questions regarding data collection and statistical aspects of the design of this research is listed below:

Jennifer Beck

Center for Survey Methods Research

Statistical Research Division

U.S. Census Bureau

5K112D

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-1736

[email protected]