Economic Census Promotional Materials Debriefing Survey Plan

The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0934). We plan to conduct an online debriefing survey with State Data Centers, Trade Associations, Media Contacts and Chambers of Commerce that received informational materials during data collection for the 2012 Economic Census. The goal of this debriefing survey is to evaluate the effectiveness of the informational materials and to identify how that information was distributed to potential respondents to the 2012 Economic Census.

In April, 2014, we intend to distribute a ten-question survey through SurveyMonkey.com, an online survey design tool that allows for the quick publication and collection of online surveys. Potential respondents will be invited to participate in the survey via e-mail. Although we will not be collecting descriptive information about the participants, we plan to keep the information collected anonymous.

We are limited to using the free version of SurveyMonkey which only allows for the collection of 100 responses. We plan to distribute the e-mail invitation to a purposive sample comprising 500 State Data Centers, Trade Associations, Media Contacts and Chambers of Commerce, in the hopes of achieving a 20% response rate, for 100 completed survey responses.

Participants will be informed in the e-mail invitation that their response is voluntary. Since this survey is being administered by SurveyMonkey.com, it resides on a server outside of the Census Bureau domain. The Census Bureau cannot guarantee the protection of survey responses and will advise against the inclusion of sensitive personal information in any response. The information provided will only be seen by Census Bureau or special sworn status employees involved in the research project. We will not provide monetary incentives to participants in this study.

We estimate that it will take participants an average of five minutes to complete the online survey (100 cases X 5 minutes per case = 8.5 hours). Additionally, we expect that the amount of time that non-respondents will spend on reading the e-mail invitation is one minute (1 minute to review the invitation X 400 non-respondents = 6.5 hours). Thus, the estimated burden for this project is 15 hours (6.5 hours for recruiting + 8.5 for completing the survey).

Enclosed is a draft copy of the survey questions and a draft of the e-mail invitation.

The contact person for questions regarding data collection and statistical aspects of the design of this research is:

Amy E. Anderson Riemer

Response Improvement Research Staff

7K130F

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-7544

[email protected]

cc:

W. Bostic (DIR) with enclosure

S. Ahmed (DIR) with enclosure

T. Smith (AMSD) with enclosure

J. Whitaker (ADEP) with enclosure

D. Willimack (ADEP) with enclosure

A. Anderson Riemer (ADEP) with enclosure

A. Tuttle (ADEP) with enclosure

C. Brady (EPCD) with enclosure

A. Oneto (EPCD) with enclosure

D. Stempowski (EPCD) with enclosure