Note to Reviewer

Note to Reviewer of 1220-0183

As the chief source of government data on employment, BLS will produce data on green goods and services businesses’ employment as tasked by the 2010 Congressional Appropriation. This initiative will produce regular tabulations of aggregate employment for businesses whose primary activities fall into green goods and services as defined by BLS. This series will be key to analyzing workforce trends in this area.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the forms and the associated Green Goods and Services collection through the OMB clearance process on April 6, 2011. The purpose of this request for clearance was for collection of data on employment related to production of green goods and services. The new Green Goods and Services (GGS) survey will collect data on employment, fiscal year, and the share of revenue or employment associated with production of green goods or services at the establishment. The clearance also included a Response Analysis Survey to be conducted in year 1 to evaluate respondents’ understanding of the survey forms. As part of that approved information collection, BLS agreed to submit the Response Analysis Survey questionnaire to OMB through a non-substantive change request.

A brief overview of the Response Analysis Survey is outlined below.

• During year 1 of the collection, BLS will conduct a Response Analysis Survey (RAS) on up to 3,000 GGS respondents and non-respondents to ensure accurate data collection. The RAS will begin during the general data collection for the GGS survey. Using a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview instrument, BLS will examine general data quality issues in the RAS. Specific questions will be developed as BLS begins analyzing the response and non-response early in the GGS collection.

  • The RAS is broken into 2 distinct groups based on the response to date. Group 1 consists of a sample of approximately 1,400 units who respond to the RAS by mail. Group 2 consists of a sample of approximately 70 units who do not respond to the survey by mail and instead respond to the RAS during the non-response prompting.

  • The sampling protocol captures respondents in all industries and of all sizes. The sampling protocol also captures both green and non-green respondents.

  • Each respondent is contacted by phone for the RAS using the contact information provided by the respondent on their survey form or during the telephone interview.

  • Questions for these 2 groups focus on topics such as how closely the respondents read the advance notification and cover letters; how well they understood the survey questions; and how well the list of examples of green goods and services in Question 4 of the survey form applied to their establishment.

  • The questionnaire structure is similar for both the mail and telephone respondents just the phrasing of the questions was altered to better fit the mode of response.