CAIR Recruitment Script

April - May, 2014

Current Agricultural Industries Report (CAIR)

Enumerator and Field Office

Verbal Consent Form

Hi, my name is <name> and I am calling from the United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, known as NASS.  We are contacting businesses like yours to ask for your help to develop the Current Agricultural Industrial Reports surveys. These surveys will provide important data about the production, consumption, and storage of commodities such as fats and oils, corn, oilseeds, flour and cotton. Is there someone at your operation that I can speak to that would be knowledgeable about this type of information?

As you may know, the U.S. Census Bureau collected and published these data under a program called the Current Industrial Reports which has been discontinued in 2012. NASS has been asked to renew these data collection series. In order to improve the quality of the data and the ease of reporting, we would like to get your feedback on the questionnaire as well as what your needs are for submitting these data using the internet.

We have specialists who will meet with you at your operation for about one and a half hours.  During this time the specialist will ask you to review the questionnaire and provide your feedback on how we can improve the questionnaire.  We have several available times in <month>.  Can we schedule someone to meet with you and get your input?

The specialist will be < name> and he/she will call you to confirm the appointment a day or two before.  The specialist might have an observer with him/her as we are training some new people.  If you need to change the appointment time, please call me back at xxx-xxx-xxxx

1. Contact information - if someone has questions you cannot answer about this interview, you can say "I am just doing the recruiting for this project, but you can call <name> at xxx-xxx-xxxx."

2. If someone asks something about the survey or being contacted, you can say "I am just doing the recruiting for this project, but you can call <name> at 202-xxx-xxxx."

3. If the respondent is curious as to why we are conducting the surveys or why they should respond we will provide the interviewers with the summarized comments we received from data users. They will be able to provide justifications from data users within their own industry.