Focus Groups for Pension Practitioners April 2010

ABBREVIATED SUPPORTING STATEMENT

AGENCY:      Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

TITLE:           Focus Group – Practitioner Web Pages

STATUS: Generic ICR under Customer Service Focus Groups and Surveys, OMB control number 1212-0053 (expires 12/31/2012)

CONTACT:    Thomas H. Gabriel (202) 326-4223 x3898

1.  Need for the collection.  This focus group will help PBGC improve its customer service by increasing its understanding of how pension practitioners who use PBGC’s Web site, www.pbgc.gov can best be served.  Responses to the collection will inform PBGC of what practitioners expect and need and how PBGC can improve its Web site to meet those expectations. 

PBGC’s polling data indicates that approximately one in ten visitors to its Web site is a pension practitioner.  Typically, practitioners visit PBGC.gov because they are preparing mandatory filings with the agency or are looking for other information needed to perform their professional duties.

PBGC wants its Web site to be designed in a way that makes it easy for these visitors to find the information they need.

2.  Intended use.  PBGC plans to use the responses for the sole purpose of improving customer service.  PBGC will protect the confidentiality of the responses to the extent provided by law. 

3.  Description of respondents.  The 30 focus group participants will be recruited from attendees at the 2010 Enrolled Actuaries Meeting in Washington, DC, in April 2010.

4.  Information collection procedures.  Approximately 350 pension practitioners will be contacted by telephone to be screened for participation in the focus group.  Fourteen practitioners will be invited to one of three focus groups; ten practitioners will actually participate in a focus group.  A PBGC contactor will then conduct the focus group.  The contractor is Shugoll Research of Bethesda, Maryland.

5.  Expected response rate.  Based on the contractor’s experience with response rates for focus groups of this kind, PBGC expects that of the 14 practitioners invited to attend each focus group, 10 (about 70%) will in fact attend.

6. Justification for incentive.  An incentive of $25 will be paid to those who appear at the focus group.

7.  Estimated burden.  The telephone screener portion is expected to involve only a de minimis burden of several minutes.  The focus group session is scheduled for 1½ hours. Focus groups will be held in the same hotel as the Enrolled Actuaries Meeting, so there will be no travel time.  For the three focus groups with 10 participants each, the total burden will be 45 hours (3 x 10 x 1½ = 45).

8.  Methodology. As a focus group, this collection does not involve use of statistical methodology.