Justification of change to SOI-494C

Justification for Proposed Changes to Approved Injured Spouse Customer Satisfaction FY2015 Knowledge Gap Testing Research

Control Number: SOI-494C

The Injured Spouse Phone Focus Group SOI-494 was originally approved on

May 11, 2016, but never conducted. To date, no information has been collected. We propose to begin collecting information with the approval of this request (SOI-494C).

The IRS is requesting the contractor recruit 27 participants instead of the 11 requested to ensure 24 participants; no more than 8 in each group. We are currently proposing to contact 280 taxpayers, 199 more than the 81 approved.

The criteria for inclusion into the focus group and the research topic was broadened to acquire feedback on interactions with CSRs, if taxpayers were provided with enough information to move forward in the Injured Spouse process, and what information was missing. As such, the amount of survey respondents in 2015 who qualified for inclusion increased to 280 potential participants. The widened pool of respondents should improve the ability to recruit participants and allow us to hold 3 focus groups instead of one.

Generally, we want to know of those who contacted us, why did they contact us? What could we have done to stop the contact? Did they have an adequate description of the process and where did it come from; where else did they go for information, if they went to IRS.gov or the instructions what was missing we needed to include, was there something we could have improved in the notice etc.) Once they contacted us, what could we have done to improve the contact, what knowledge was missing from CSR, What questions were not answered about case outcomes, What was missing from updates received on the call.

_{BURDEN HOURS}

We propose an increase in burden from 12.62 hours to 35.58 hours, an increase of 22.96 hours.

The respondent will participate in only one focus group research study out of three groups. This will aid in decreasing respondent burden. We estimate contacting 280 taxpayers to recruit 24 needed for the focus group session. The total burden estimate for recruiting and administering the group session is 35.58 hours.

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden Hours
Recruiting 27 participants (for 24 to show)	27	5 minutes	2.25 2.33
Contacting 280 contacts	280 22222280280	2 minutes	9.33 9.33
Participants 24 (8 per each group of 3)	24 24	60 minutes	24.00 2424.00
Totals			35.58

Data Collection dates is estimated to be June 30, 2016 through September 30, 2016.

There is no additional cost.

This change will not affect anything else except the period of performance dates and a modification has been forwarded to Procurement to extend through November 30, 2016.