UNITED STATES MINT
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH – Teachers’ Network Survey
12/14/2012
Purpose of the Research
The purpose of conducting the United States Mint Teachers’ Network Survey is to capture feedback on the United States Mint’s Educators’ website, H.I.P. Pocket Change (Kids’) website and Teachers’ Network newsletters from educators who have signed up to join our Teachers’ Network. The objective of conducting this survey is to understand how educators are using our website and newsletters and how we can optimize both mediums to best serve educators’ needs.
Executive Order No. 12862 (September 1993), titled “Setting Customer Service Standards,” established a mandate for the government to improve and adhere to best practices when providing customer service directly to the American people such as surveys of customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction with existing services (Section 1b). The United States Mint continuously strives, as part of its mission, to provide the highest quality service to the American people. In order to effectively accomplish these goals, it is crucial for the United States Mint to understand and maintain awareness of customer preferences and needs and to continuously monitor customer satisfaction. To that end, this study will enable the United States Mint to maintain high levels of satisfaction among these customers by ensuring that the content we provide, and the way we provide it, effectively meets their needs.
The United States Mint Teachers’ Network Survey is designed to be web-based, with customers/users receiving an e-mail invitation to complete the survey. Because the number of users is relatively small, we will sample our entire population of users (11,000), of which we expect approximately 5 percent will complete the survey, yielding an expected sample of 550.
The users receiving email invitations for the survey will be obtained from cleansed database lists. The entire population of subscribers to the Teachers’ Network will be selected. Potential respondents will be sent email invitations to take the survey on-line. The survey should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Based on our historic response rates and our experience with this customer/user group, we anticipate a final sample size of 550 customers. Collected survey data will be coded, cleaned and tabulated.
The Teachers’ Network Survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete and will cover the following topics:
Demographics – type of school, teaching experience
Evaluation of the Educators’ website
Evaluation of Kids’ website
Evaluation of the newsletters
This survey approach is designed to minimize the amount of intrusion and burden that is placed on customers. Accordingly, calls will not be made to them, nor will other “intrusive” measures that normally might be used to maximize response rates. We plan to send e-mail invitations to Teachers’ Network members explaining that participation is totally voluntary. No monetary incentive will be offered.
We typically achieve very high response rates among our customers/users (4%-10% depending on the segment) even without an incentive. We keep surveys to a manageable length and field topics that are interesting and important to our customers. We ensure that our data provide reliable population-level inferences by carefully designing sampling plans with appropriate strata and sample sizes and by weighting the data, as warranted, to account for the survey design and to adjust for non-response.
We deal with non-response bias in a number of ways. First, question non-response (those who don’t answer a question but would otherwise complete the survey) is minimized by the survey tool, which requires respondents to make a selection for all questions. Second, survey non-response (people who don’t respond to the survey invitation and those who respond but don’t complete the survey) is minimized by keeping the survey short and as simple as practicable, allowing respondents to take the survey at a time convenient to them, and by sending reminder emails (usually one to two) to invitees who have not yet responded.
To the extent that a non-response bias is or could be present in any of our research, we attempt to identify it through a number of means, including by comparing responses among early and late respondents, comparing responses among any targeted segments, and comparing responses along demographic lines. We account for non-response bias by applying adjustment techniques when appropriate and available.
The collection of information will involve completion of the survey via the Internet with up to a maximum of 550 randomly selected respondents. The average interview length for all respondents will be approximately 10 minutes. Therefore, the total estimated annual burden for this survey wave is 92 hours.
|
Teachers’ Network Survey |
All respondents |
550 |
Average Interview Minutes |
10 |
Total estimated burden |
92 hours |
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | Purpose of the Research |
| Author | Kathy Chiarello |
| Last Modified By | YPollard |
| File Modified | 2012-12-14 |
| File Created | 2012-12-14 |