SOI-475 Appeals Tax Professional Focus Groups

OMB Clearance (1545-1349)

Information Collection Request (ICR) to

Conduct Cognitive-Psychological Research

Supporting Statement

Appeals Tax Professional Focus Groups

1. JUSTIFICATION

1. Circumstances Making the Collection of Information Necessary

Background/Overview

IRS has replaced the traditional measures of accomplishment with a balanced measurement system consisting of business results, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. As an important customer interface the Appeals Division needs feedback from customers to continuously improve its operations. This initiative is part of the service-wide effort to establish a system of balanced organizational performance measures mandated by the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. This is also a result of Executive Order 12862, which requires all government agencies to survey their customers and incorporate customer preferences in their process improvement efforts.

2. Purpose and Use of the Information Collection

The data collected will be used to develop a better understanding of the taxpayer experience in Appeals. It will assist the IRS in developing an understanding of the service needs and preferences of these taxpayers. The goal of a focus group is to solicit general opinions about a topic. An important aspect of focus groups is that they give rise to insights and solutions that may not be derived from other methods. Focus group interviews are qualitative research, meaning no statistical difference between groups can be determined. Specifically, they are a directed discussion with small groups of 7 to 10 people on a specific topic.

Focus group participants will be asked about their expectations entering the Appeals process, the clarity of information obtained and requested during the appeals process, and other aspects of the process for which the participants feel necessary to provide feedback. There will be 2 groups, both with tax professionals. One group will be comprised of tax professionals who represented individual taxpayers who come from a Collections work stream, and the other will be comprised of tax professionals who represented business taxpayers who come from an Examination work stream. Participants will never be asked to provide private details about a case they represented.

3. Consideration Given to Information Technology

N/A

4. Duplication of Information

Direct interaction with tax professionals through focus groups has been a research design used by the IRS for a number of years. Our target population has not been studied previously and therefore there is no duplication of research.

5. Reducing the Burden on Small Entities

N/A

6. Consequences of Not Conducting Collection

IRS Appeals will not be able to measure and improve external customer satisfaction with the Appeals process. Feedback from customers is important in order to assess perceptions of the Appeals customer service to help develop service improvement actions. Focus groups capture in-depth information that the current customer satisfaction survey cannot capture. If the focus groups are not conducted, the primary goals of the Appeals organization to improve customer service will not be achieved.

7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances. The information collected will be voluntary.

8. Consultations with Persons Outside the Agency

ICF International will work collaboratively with Appeals to design the moderator’s guides and screeners. ICF will conduct the groups and write the report.

9. Payment or Gift

$75 for each participant. It is standard practice to compensate participants for their participation in focus groups in order to ensure a balanced representation of the target audience. The amount is determined to be sufficient enough to motivate participation, but not so much as to be considered coercion.

10. Confidentiality

The data returned to IRS Appeals will have no identifying information relating specific records to participants or individual taxpayers. Nonetheless, ICF and IRS Appeals will ensure that privacy to the extent allowed by law and security of the aggregated results will receive the utmost attention. Public and official access to the information will be tightly controlled. The computer files containing this tabulated information will remain password protected at all times.

The focus groups will be audio recorded but participants will be instructed to not use their last name during the session. Only ICF staff will have access to the recordings and the recordings will be used to supplement the notes and assist with report writing. The recordings will be stored on a secure drive accessible only to IRS cleared staff who are working on this project. After the report is finalized, the recordings will be destroyed.

Participants will not be asked to provide any personal information. ICF will limit and control the amount of information we collect to those items that are necessary to accomplish the research questions. ICF will carefully safeguard the security of data utilized as well as the privacy of the survey respondents to the extent allowed by law. ICF will apply the fair information and record-keeping practices to ensure protection of all survey respondents. The criterion for disclosure laid out in the Privacy Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the protection of information as well as its releases to authorized recipients.

11. Sensitive Nature

No questions will be asked that are of personal or sensitive nature nor will any participant be required to answer any question.

12. Burden of Information Collection

The estimated time to complete the participant screening is 5 minutes. The estimated time for each reminder call is 1 minute, with each testing session lasting 1 hour. We estimate that 10 percent of the taxpayers contacted for the study will qualify and be willing to participate. Using this percentage, a total of 160 individuals will need to be screened to recruit the needed 8 participants for each focus group.

Type of Collection	No. of Respondents	Hours per Response	Total Hours
Estimated time to complete screening	160	5 minutes	13.3
Estimated time for reminder phone call	16	1 minute	0.3
Estimated time to complete Informed Consent	16	1 minute	0.3
Time to conduct study	16	1 hour	16
Total Hours for Survey Process			29.9

Note: We will recruit 8 participants per group for 6 to participants to show. However, we will accept 8 participants if they all call in.

13. Costs to Respondents

N/A

14. Costs to Federal Government

The anticipated cost to the Federal Government is approximately $17,976.

15. Reason for Change

N/A

16. Tabulation of Results, Schedule, Analysis Plans

Since the data will be qualitative in nature, ICF will synthesize impressions and key information gathered from the focus groups. ICF will use recordings and notes to identify key themes in order to facilitate understanding of the taxpayer regarding their customer service experience.

17. Display of OMB Approval Date

N/A

18. Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

N/A

19. Dates Collection will Begin and End

October 2014

The dates for conducting the focus groups depend solely on the date the project receives OMB approval, therefore the dates will be chosen once OMB approval is received.

B. STATISTICAL METHODS

1. Universe and Respondent Selection

One group will be comprised of tax professionals who represented individual taxpayers who come from a Collections work stream, and the other will be comprised of tax professionals who represented business taxpayers who come from an Examination work stream. All respondents have been surveyed during the FY2013 or FY2014 customer satisfaction survey, and have agreed to be contacted for focus group research.

ICF will contact potential participants using the phone number(s) and/or email addresses that they provided when they were contacted for the customer satisfaction survey. If the respondents meet the screening criteria and are available at the time of the discussion, they will be included.

2. Procedures for Collecting Information

Data will be collected in a telephone focus group format. The groups will be conducted by ICF. ICF will be responsible for recruiting and conducting the focus groups. Following the groups, ICF will submit a report of the results to Appeals.

3. Methods to Maximize Response

It is common for recruited participants to have last-minute conflicts with focus group discussion times. ICF will recruit 2 more participants than are needed to ensure enough people attend the groups. Recruit 8 for 6 to 8 to show. Should all 8 recruited participants dial in to the discussion, all 8 will be included in the discussion.

4. Testing of Procedures

N/A

5. Contacts for Statistical Aspects and Data Collection

For questions regarding the study, contact:

Sherri Settle

Project Manager

ICF International

(301) 572-0342

or

Rocco DiLisio

IRS Appeals, Policy Analyst, Customer Satisfaction Survey Coordinator

[email protected]

412.395.4994

Attachments

Screener

Informed Consent

Moderator’s Guides