Form Classification Stu Classification Stu Classification Study Vinnettes, Questionnaire and Debrie

Attachment I: Study Vignettes¹

Vignette Type	Vignette Number	Baseline Vignettes
Private – For Profit (P)	1	Miriam operates a veterinary clinic in a rural area. She treats both large and small animals; in the case of large animals Miriam makes house calls but she treats small animals at the clinic. Miriam’s practice recently affiliated with a regional network of veterinary clinics to offer discounted medications as well as easier access to specialist care from other network members. Her clinic employs a receptionist-secretary, two vet techs, and an animal caretaker for a boarding kennel as a side business. Miriam, the administrative and paraprofessional staff are salaried (the animal caretaker is paid by the hour.)
P	2	Tina is an experienced operator of a 42 in. Wohlenberg cutting machine in the bindery of a large printing plant. Her seniority allows her to work the shift of her choice almost all of the time. She is paid bi-weekly and participates in the company health insurance and 401(k) retirement plans.
P	3	William is a realtor associated with Modern Family Realtors, a local firm. He has a home office but he meets clients at the Modern Family office where he has a cubicle, a phone and conference room privileges. The realty company provides William with the cubicle and secretarial services for a fee of $500 a month.
P	4	Marcella has done graphic design work since she graduated from college. She markets her work to clients through word-of-mouth and ads in the local paper, and is currently working on a long-term contract with an advertising agency in a city near her home. She does some work at home as well as occasionally working on-site at the client’s offices.
P	5	Edwin is a residential interior/exterior paint contractor. He and his father are in the family business, Holtzapple & Sons Painters, although his father is working less now and letting Edwin take on the larger jobs. The partners have an office in an industrial park building where they also store their supplies and garage the business’ two vans.

Vignette Type	Vignette Number	Baseline Vignettes
P	6	Jacqueline is an organic gardener who sells her produce through a local food co-operative store. In the winter she sells dried flowers, and kitchen as well as medicinal herbs from the garden. Jackie’s husband and two teenagers help her tend the garden and prepare the dried plants for sale or shipment.
P	7	Geoff is a lawyer whose chronic illness requires expensive medical treatment. Unable to maintain his private legal practice, he recently began doing legal work for an innovative software corporation, where he assists the company’s intellectual property lawyer to prepare and file software patents. Geoff is paid a daily rate and works at least 40 hours a week, so that he can afford health insurance.
P	8	Randall is a PhD chemist-toxicologist specialist who operates an independent testing laboratory that he owns. His lab is licensed and accredited and it analyzes chemical samples for a wide range of clients, from law enforcement agencies to agricultural chemical producers. Randall now employs two full-time lab technicians and occasionally hires specialist consultants as needed for specific projects.
P	9	Regina after several years a twenty-year career as a military policewoman and has opened a private security agency. She started and still owns the business with her husband helping keep up with paperwork in his spare time while he still drives a truck for a construction company. Regina has worked hard developing the business and now has contracts to provide 24-hour plant security, primarily at high-tech companies, so she now employs 12 full-time and another 8 part-time security officers.
P	10	Alice is an artist who paints and makes woodcut prints for a living. She started her painting and sculpting as a source of extra income a few years ago while she was teaching. She now uses a converted garden shed in her back yard as a studio. A local gallery has the exclusive right to sell her art work and the gallery owner meets with her every couple of months to make suggestions about the kinds of paintings or prints that he believes will sell well and bring the best prices. The arrangement she has with this local gallery does allow her to do a semi-annual art show in a big-city gallery that’s not far away.

Vignette Type	Vignette Number	Baseline Vignettes
Non-Profit (NP)	11	Stephanie is Executive Director of a city Police Athletic League. She came to the job after a stint as Director of Campfire USA Camp Takahani. Stephanie is responsible for coordinating a variety of youth development programs such as a juvenile program targeted to long-term crime prevention. The PAL Board of Directors negotiated Stephanie’s salary and benefits with her when she was hired.
NP	12	Arnold is an experienced carpenter who is Director of a program that offers specialized training in weatherization construction skills for low-income and unemployed workers. The program is operated by a foundation and funded by the local gas and electric company. It also has grant funding from the state department of workforce development. The Town Council deeded an unused building to the foundation and Arnold is currently preparing to give his students some supervised work experience by installing energy-saving upgrades on this building. He temporarily hires weatherization-trained workers from the building trades to teach their specific skills.
NP	13	Nicholas performs general maintenance and repairs for an inner-city school. The schools serves “at-risk” young people who have dropped out of the local public school system but now want to get more education and some career training. A community organization that is mostly funded by corporate contributions runs the schools. Nicholas is skilled in plumbing, wiring, repairing HVAC equipment and other maintenance tasks.
NP	14	Helen is a speech therapist who helps local schools prepare and implement Individualized Education Program (IEP) plans for children in need of speech therapy. She is notified of a request for her services through the school district’s Office of Special Education.
NP	15	Philip is a trained nurse and a lay missionary for his church. He is currently operating a small mission clinic on a Native American reservation. The clinic provides basic nursing care to outpatients each weekday morning. In the afternoons, Philip visits families on the reservation to check on health issues and to perform missionary work on behalf of the church. He leads a religious service each Sunday in the tribal hall.

Vignette Type	Vignette Number	Baseline Vignettes
Gov’t (G)	16	Therese is a senior architecture student at a state university. She still attends classes, but has taken a job that pays a salary for working at least 20 hours a week at the local city’s building and zoning agency. On this job Therese reviews permits for repair and preservation of historic buildings, since she intends to make a career of applying her architectural skills in the area of historic building restoration.
G	17	Marvin works full time collecting water samples and measuring air quality for his state environmental agency. He gathers environmental data at certain locations in the northwest part of the state where he lives. He’s mostly outdoors in the field in his car and on foot. He occasionally attends meetings at agency headquarters in the state capital.
G	18	Lawrence is an experienced automotive technician who maintains or repairs the vehicles (police, fire, ambulance, etc.) owned by his town. Lawrence works on the vehicles in a town garage, using his own tools. The city transportation department buys needed parts and supplies from its approved vendors, from requisitions that Lawrence prepares and submits to the Town Clerk’s office.
G	19	Fred is an attorney specializing in taxation and investment. He works for an urban economic development corporation wholly funded by city tax revenues. The corporation markets the city nationally and internationally to attract businesses to move to the city. Fred prepares the legal documents that spell out the terms of these economic incentives. The city offers new business candidates tax breaks and low-interest financing as incentives for them to move to the area.
G	20	Chizuko is a Japanese statistician who works with a group of other statisticians in a federal agency. She has developed an innovative method for analyzing economic data that the agency is eager to adopt. She has an office at the agency and is co-leader of a team of economists and statisticians who are integrating her new method into agency operations.

Attachment II: Respondent Questionnaire

General Instructions for Both Conditions

The purpose of this study is to learn about how people pick their answers to a question in the Current Population Survey. That’s the survey where we get a lot of information about America’s workers and the jobs they hold.  You will be asked to read brief descriptions of the work situations of people we’ve made up and given first names to. After reading about each situation, we want you select the type of worker you think that person is from a set of categories you’ll be given.  This is not a test of anything you ought to know; there are no right or wrong answers.  Please read the descriptions and follow-up questions in this packet carefully, and use your best judgment to decide what type of worker you think the person is.  This questionnaire is designed to be self-administered, so we cannot help you during the session.  At the end of the session, however, we will be glad to answer any questions that you may have.”

ROUND 1: COW-related Items for Standard Condition:

In your judgment, is the person described in this vignette employed by government, by a private company, a non-profit organization, or is he/she self-employed? (Select only one)

Government

Private company

Non-profit organization

Self-employed

How confident are you in this categorization? (Select one)

Totally confident

Not at all confident

ROUND 1: COW-related Items for Split Condition:

In your judgment, is the person described in this vignette self-employed or not self-employed?
(Select only one)

Self-employed

Not self-employed

How confident are you in this categorization?

Totally confident

Not at all confident

ROUND 2: Instructions for Standard Condition:

Now we would like you to go through the same short job descriptions again. This time, you will be asked to categorize each job situation using a slightly different set of categories. Please indicate which employment sector (government, private company, non-profit organization) you believe best fits the job. You will notice that for the purposes of this round of questions, the category of self-employment is no longer an option. In some cases, your answers may be the same as before, and in some instances you may want to change your answer. We ask that you do not look back at your previous answers when deciding how to categorize these situations again. Please choose only one answer for each vignette. As before, if you are not sure which answer best fits the situation described, please just use your best judgment and select the one category that you feel most closely applies.

ROUND 2: Instructions for Split Condition:

Now we would like you to go through the same short job descriptions again. This time, you will be asked to categorize each job situation using a different set of categories. Rather than asking you if the person described in the write-up is self-employed or not, we want you to indicate which employment sector (government, private company, non-profit organization) you believe best fits the job. Please choose only one answer for each vignette. As before, if you are not sure which answer best fits the situation described, please just use your best judgment and select the one category that you feel most closely applies.

 

ROUND 2: COW-related Items for Both Conditions:

What is the nature of the employment in this description? Would you say that this person works in…

The government

A private company

A non-profit organization

How confident are you in this categorization?

Totally confident

Not at all confident

Attachment III: Debriefing Items

Introduction

Thank you for completing the set of questions above. We’re going to shift gears now and ask you a few questions about your experience in today’s session. We realize that some of the items you were asked to answer can be challenging for some people, so we’re hoping to get a better understanding of how you answered the questions.

D1. Generally speaking, how easy or difficult was it for you to decide how to classify the fictional characters you read about into one of the four employment categories (i.e., employed by government, private company, non-profit organization, or self-employed)? Would you say that it was:

Very easy

Somewhat easy

Neither easy nor difficult

Somewhat difficult

Very difficult

D2. For every work situation you read about, we asked you to pick just one answer out of four choices. Those choices were: government, private company, a non-profit organization, or self employed. Do you think that these four choices are all really different from each other, or are any of them pretty much like each other? Please tell us in your own words about how you see it.

D3a. We asked you to indicate how confident or sure you were about your answers for each job we showed you. Please look back over your answers now from the first time you went through the vignettes (pg. 2 – 13 of this packet) and find the one you felt the least sure (least confident) about. (If you assigned the same (low) confidence rating to two or more vignettes, select whichever one you would like to discuss here.) Write down the number of the item that you selected (below), and tell us briefly what it was about that job that caused you to be unsure about your answer?

Fdfsf

D3b. Now review your answers from the second time you went through the vignettes (pg. 14 – 26 of this packet) and find the one you felt the least sure (least confident) about from this group. (Again, if you assigned the same (low) confidence rating to two or more vignettes, select whichever one you would like to discuss here.) Write down the number of the item that you selected (below), and tell us briefly what it was about that job that caused you to be unsure about your answer?

Fdfsf

D4. One of the main goals of the study is to learn more about what being self-employed really means to most people. Please finish the following sentence:

To me, a self-employed person is someone who…

D5. If someone asked you the bolded question below, which answer would you pick for your own job (or if you’re not working right now, your last job)?

Are (or were) you employed by government, by a private company, a non-profit organization, or were you self employed?

Government

Private company

Non-profit organization

Self-employed

D6a. How easy or difficult was it for you to decide how to classify yourself into one of these four employment categories (i.e., employed by government, private company, non-profit organization, or self-employed)? Would you say that it was:

Very easy

Somewhat easy

Neither easy nor difficult

Somewhat difficult

Very difficult

D6b. Please tell us more about that – what made it easy or difficult?

D7. Now that we’re about finished for the day, we’d like you to tell us how you feel about taking part in this study.

How interesting was this study to you? Would you say that it was:

Very interesting

Somewhat interesting

Neither interesting nor uninteresting

Somewhat uninteresting

Not at all interesting

D8. What other reactions (if any) did you have to today’s session? Feel free to expand upon a previous answer, or to discuss other aspects of the study that we have not yet discussed (e.g., clarity of instructions, clarity of written job descriptions, etc.).

1 These baseline vignettes will be modified to create the four variants (i.e., supervision – positive, supervision – negative; financial role – positive, financial role – negative) by adding a single sentence. We have not included the full matrix of 100 vignettes here to save space (see the Research Design, Vignette section, above, for examples of how the vignettes will be permuted). Additionally, OSMR will conduct a small-scale (fewer than 10) pre-test of the vignettes, and may modify these materials on the basis of those results. We will submit any new/changed material to OMB prior to the start of the study.