Statistical Methods
The potential respondent universe consists of all State, local, and external Federal law enforcement personnel who attend formal ATF training. For any given year, the estimated universe of external law enforcement personnel annually trained is 1,800. The desired response rate is 70% of this population, but no lower than 30% to ensure at minimum a 95% level of confidence with a 3.5% margin of error. The survey consists of Likert scale based questions in order to collect quantifiable data regarding responses to given questions or statements. Open ended fields are provided to give respondents the opportunity for additional comment and allow for the collection of qualitative data that could provide context for the quantitative responses.
The survey was constructed for ease in analyzing, tabulating, and summarizing the data. The analysis of the data will be kept as simple as possible and limited to what is necessary to draw the proper conclusions with the data.
Quantitative Analysis:
Use of descriptive statistics will enable ATF to summarize a large amount of information. The web based software application used to collect the data also includes statistical analysis functionality that will provide mean, median, and mode of respondent responses. Frequency distribution and percentage data is also provided through the software application and will also be used to analyze the data.
Qualitative Analysis:
A content analysis of the additional respondent comments will be performed in order to identify recurrent themes and trends.
In order to maximize response rates, ATF will use a web based survey application to deploy and manage responses. The design of the questions and the use of a web based survey emphasize ease of use and will facilitate participation. The surveys rely primarily on Likert scale, check-box questions, which decrease completion time and ease of use since the respondent does not have to provide lengthy narrative responses. In addition to maximizing ease of completion and submission for the respondent, the system tracks responses so that ATF will be able to send reminder notices to those persons who did not respond initially to the survey. Past experience has shown that reminder notices can dramatically improve the response rate.
No tests of procedures or methods will be undertaken.
The Learning Systems Management Division is responsible for developing the data collection instrument and analyzing the data. Two individuals from the division were involved in the design of the collection instruments and are responsible for analysis and reporting. The following individual is the point of contact for this collection effort:
James Scott
Program Manager
ATF Headquarters
Learning Systems Management Division
99 New York Avenue, NE
Mailstop 2E – 430
Washington, DC 20226
202-648-8385
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | Department of Justice |
| Author | ATF |
| Last Modified By | lbryant |
| File Modified | 2009-07-23 |
| File Created | 2009-07-23 |