OMBclearance Supporing StatementPartA_4_16

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

U.S. Department of Commerce

U.S. Census Bureau

Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey

OMB Control No. 0607-XXXX

Part A – Justification

1. Necessity of the Information Collection

Every ten years, the U.S. Census Bureau is constitutionally and congressionally mandated, pursuant to Title 13 U.S.C. Section 141, to count everyone (citizens and non-citizens) residing in the United States. An accurate count is critical for many reasons including but not limited to:

• Congressional reapportionment,

• Redistricting congressional boundaries;

• Community planning; and

• Distribution of public funds and program development.

To facilitate the data collection effort for the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau is developing an Integrated Communications Plan (ICP). Toward that end, the Census Bureau has contracted with DraftFCB to develop and implement an integrated communications campaign for the 2010 Census. DraftFCB has contracted with MACRO International, Inc. (who in turn has subcontracted with Human Resources Research Organization) to conduct a nationwide quantitative data collection to understand the barriers and motivators underlying participation (or lack thereof) in Census 2010. This data collection is critical to ensure the utility and effectiveness of the ICP.

The role of the ICP is to increase public awareness and motivate people to respond to the census promptly, saving millions of taxpayer dollars. The specific objectives of the ICP are:

• Increase mail response;

• Improve cooperation with enumerators; and

• Improve overall accuracy and reduce differential undercount

From 1970—the first year questionnaires were mailed to households—to 1990, the mail response rate declined from 78 percent to 65 percent. To halt the declining mail response rate, the Census Bureau ran a paid advertising campaign to support data collection activities for the 2000 Census. This campaign was considered a very successful initiative and one of several reasons cited with helping to reverse declining mail response rates.

The target mail response rate for the 2010 Census has been set at 69 percent, higher than the 67 percent obtained in Census 2000. To support this goal, the ICP includes a communications campaign based on behavior during the 2000 Census and current knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, barriers, and motivations specific to 2010 Census participation.

The Census Bureau is requesting clearance for DraftFCB’s subcontractor, MACRO International, Inc. to conduct the Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey to gain an in-depth understanding of the public’s opinions about the 2010 Census. Collecting this information allows the Census Bureau to explore underlying factors contributing to public views of the 2010 Census; identify census related behavioral drivers and barriers; determine communication channels for reaching historically hard-to-count populations; and analyze messages they should convey to motivate the public to participate—potentially saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars used to collect the census data.

The legal authority under which this information is being collected is the general authority of the Census Bureau to undertake the decennial Census in 2010, Title 13 U.S.C. Section 141.

2. Needs and Uses

The primary purpose of the Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey is to inform tactical and strategic decisions for the ICP. The data collected will not be used to produce official Census Bureau estimates of the population. The survey is a stand-alone data collection conducted to provide insight about Census messaging and why certain populations fill out or do not fill out the Census form.

This research is designed to complement previous participation research conducted for Census 2000 as well as the Census Planning Database (a geographic summary file with Census 2000 response information) to inform the strategic direction of the 2010 Census Integrated Communications Plan (ICP). When possible, respondents to the Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey will be matched to the Census Planning Database (PDB) by tract number to link to Census 2000 census participation and hard-to-count data. In cases where a link to tract can be made, we will further roll cases back up into an eight-cluster segmentation scheme based on the PDB.

The data will be used primarily to augment the audience segmentation database that currently exists. The survey data will provide necessary information about which campaign messages resonate most among clusters as well as the barriers and motivators that exist in each cluster. The survey data will also be used to validate and augment the cluster characteristics (e.g., media usage and consumption, psychographics, trusted word-of-mouth sources). This information will be used to craft and target primary and secondary messages for the campaign.

The Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey will make use of three different sampling frames described below:

Address Frame: No address information is collected from the respondent. The selected addresses are sampled from the USPS’s Delivery Sequence File (DSF) and geo-coded to link to census tract.

RDD Landline Frame: No address information is collected from the respondent. Telephone numbers will be reverse matched to local telephone directories to identify as many addresses as possible. These addresses will be geo-coded to link to census tract. For those with no match (unlisted telephone numbers), we use the estimated census tract based on the telephone exchange and geographic associations.

RDD Cell Phone Frame: For cell phone respondents, we cannot determine geographic location since cell phone area codes are not always geographically associated. Instead, we will rely on demographic data such as age, marital status, mobility, tenure, and whether the household is cell-phone only to assign interviews into segment.

The combined data will be used to measure census awareness, attitudes, knowledge, and likelihood to respond to the census. This data will be used to further define the audience segmentation clusters to inform the communications strategy. Further, the data will be used to evaluate census messaging alternatives and analyze media consumption by audience segmentation.

Information quality is an integral part of the pre-dissemination review of the information disseminated by the Census Bureau (fully described in the Census Bureau's Information Quality Guidelines). Information quality is also integral to the information collections conducted by the Census Bureau and is incorporated into the clearance process required by the Paperwork Reduction Act.

3. Use of Information Technology

Approximately 75 percent of the interviews will be conducted using computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). A survey verification line with interactive voice recognition (IVR) will be available to field inquiries about the authenticity of the survey, to allow the respondent to opt out of the survey, or transfer to a company representative to complete the interview (during operating hours).

Additionally, slightly less than 10 percent of the interviews will be conducted among cell phone users. This stratum attempts to include the growing population of households that are cell phone only and may be missed in traditional RDD land-line surveys. Recent studies indicate that close to 15 percent of U.S. households are cell phone only and disproportionately represent renters and younger households. By including cell phone numbers as part of our frame, we address this growing use of information technology to reach beyond the traditional bounds of RDD surveys.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

The information collected in the Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey is unduplicated.

The Census 2000 advertising campaign was developed with an audience segmentation focusing one’s likelihood to engage in civic activities. The segmentation was based on syndicated data available from Simmons Research and used to approximate census participation. Knowledge, awareness, and perceptions about Census 2000 were not measured to inform the Census 2000 campaign.

For evaluating the Census 2000 advertising campaign, the Census Bureau commissioned NORC to measure and track knowledge and awareness of Census 2000. The evaluation included three cross-sectional surveys: a baseline survey (Sept 1- Nov 1, 1999); a pre-census survey (Jan 17 - March 11, 2000) and a post-census survey (April 17 - June 17, 2000).

Despite many commonalities to Census 2000 the social and political landscape has shifted and the Census Bureau is facing new challenges such as: distrust in government is higher than ever; heightened confidentiality concerns; shifting core values (quality of life; family values); definition of community is broadening; recent debates on immigration; and increased language barriers. There is no contemporary data available that comprehensively measures public opinions about the census.

5. Minimizing Burden

The data collection does not impact small entities.

6. Consequences of Less Frequent Collection

This is a one-time data collection.

7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances. Data collection is conducted in accordance with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines.

8. Consultations Outside the Agency

On December 14, 2007, we published a notice in the Federal Register (Vol. 72, No. 240, pages 71116-71117) seeking public comment on the necessity, content and scope of the data collection. We received an email on 12/14. We deemed the content to not be relevant to the data collection. We received a letter on 2/12 from Andrew Reamer, a Fellow at The Brookings Institute. The letter supported the Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey as a cost-effective way to obtain information necessary to increase response rates to Census 2010. The letter also recommended shortening the length of the questionnaire and avoiding jargon in the question wording. We concur with this recommendation and have eliminated several questions.

Outside the Federal Government, consultants include:

Tanya White

DraftFCB

100 West 33^rd St

New York, NY 10001

Darlene Billia

DraftFCB

100 West 33^rd St

New York, NY 10001

Vita Harris

DraftFCB

100 West 33^rd St

New York, NY 10001

Randal ZuWallack

Macro International, Inc.

126 College Street

Burlington, VT 05401

Lawrence Luskin

Macro International, Inc.

11785 Beltsville Drive

Suite 300

Calverton, MD 20705

Todd Hamlin

Macro International, Inc.

11785 Beltsville Drive

Suite 300

Calverton, MD 20705

Linda Jacobsen

Population Reference Bureau

1875 Connecticut Ave, N.W.

Suite 520

Washington, D.C. 20009-5728

9. Paying Respondents

Previous research by the Census Bureau and others has indicated that monetary incentives can increase participation among historically undercounted groups, for example, households in poverty (see Martin, Abreau and Winters, 2001). Additionally, the use of incentives may also reduce the time and money required to make contact with respondents (Creighton, King and Martin, 1999). To ensure that the Census Barriers Attitudes and Motivators Survey achieves adequate response rates and represents hard-to-count populations crucial in planning the communications campaign, incentives will be provided for two of the strata. First, to compensate for telephone charges incurred from the survey and to encourage the young/mobile/single population to participate, cell phone respondents will be offered a $10 gift in the form of an Amazon.com® gift certificate.¹ Additionally, respondents to the personal interviews being conducted in the hard-to-count strata (American Indian reservations, high Hispanic density areas, high Asian density area, and rurally located economically disadvantaged households) will be offered a $10 cash gift to increase the response rate. The RDD landline telephone respondents will not be offered any gift or payment.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

Respondents will not be assured confidentiality. During the interview, respondents will be informed that, “I want to assure you that your answers will be kept completely anonymous. IF NEEDED: I will not ask for your name, address, or other personal information that can identify you. We will only ask for your opinions”.

11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

The survey does not include questions of a sensitive nature.

12. Estimate of Hour Burden

The annual respondent burden for conducting 4,000 interviews is estimated at 1,667 hours. This estimate includes 800 personal interviews, 2900 telephone interviews and 300 cell phone interviews. The average length for all three survey modes is estimated to be 25 minutes. The interview is administered once to each respondent.

MACRO will conduct a limited number of cognitive pretests (15 respondents total) for a total of 15 additional burden hours.

13. Estimate of Cost Burden

For over 90 percent of the respondents, we do not expect respondents to incur any cost other than their time to participate. Most cell phone respondents will incur phone charges, either in used minutes or per minute cost. To offset these charges, cell phone participants are being offered a $10 gift.

14. Cost to Federal Government

The cost of this data collection is an estimated $1.3 million.

15. Reason for Change in Burden

This is a new data collection.

16. Project Schedule

The primary purpose of the research is to collect data that will add to and enhance the current audience segmentation clusters. Once data collection is completed, the immediate priority will be to perform analysis that allows us to finalize the full audience segmentation and commence with developing communications to specific target audiences. Reporting will consist of general topline findings including: purpose

and background of the research; research methods used, including approach to reaching HTC populations; and general findings about public perception and awareness of the Census.

The timeline below is based on receiving OMB approval on 4/20/2008.

Task	Start	End
Conduct cognitive interviews	2/12/2008	3/12/2008
Qualitative analysis	3/12/2008	3/26/2008
Questionnaire changes	3/26/2008	4/9/2008
Field recruitment	2/12/2008	4/20/2008
Field materials prep	4/20/2008	5/18/2008
Interviewer Training	4/20/2008	5/18/2008
Field interviews	5/18/2008	8/16/2008
Data entry and processing	6/17/2008	9/13/2008
Field weighting	9/13/2008	9/20/2008
CATI prep	4/20/2008	5/18/2008
Telephone interviewing	5/18/2008	7/17/2008
Data processing	7/17/2008	8/7/2008
CATI Weighting	7/17/2008	8/7/2008
Produce cross-tabs (CATI only)	8/7/2008	8/14/2008
Produce cross-tabs (all data)	9/20/2008	9/27/2008
Develop interactive cross-tabs	9/20/2008	9/27/2008
Final analysis and report	9/13/2008	10/13/2008
Final presentation	10/13/2008	10/27/2008

17. Request to Not Display Expiration Date

The data collection instruments will include the OMB control number and expiration date. This information will be conveyed verbally to the respondents.

18. Exceptions to the Certification

There are no exceptions to the certification statement.

1 Amazon.com is not a sponsor of this promotion. Amazon, Amazon.com, and the Amazon.com logo are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Amazon.com gift certificates are issued by A2Z Gift Certificates, Inc. and are redeemable only at www.amazon.com. See www.amazon.com/gc-legal for terms and conditions of use of Amazon.com gift certificates.