Appendix A - HINTS Approvals

APPENDIX A:

HINTS 4 sub-study approvals from OMB

Activity	OMB Number	Approval Date	Description
Focus groups	0925-0589-06	1/13/2011	Conducted to identify the most effective messages to use with the HINTS 4 mailing materials to encourage the participation of all sampled households, improve overall response rate and diminish the chances of systematic nonresponse specific to certain subpopulations. These focus groups resulted in the materials included the study mailings.
Cognitive testing for pilot/Cycle 1 instrument	0925-0589-09	2/2/2011	Conducted to identify problems in question wording, context or order effects, as well as response difficulties resulting from the design and layout of the new mail form. The instrument changes that resulted from the cognitive testing were included in the pilot instrument in sub-study OMB No. 0925-0589-10 below.
Pilot test	0925-0589-10	3/7/2011	Conducted with a sample of 1,000 households nation-wide. The goals of the pilot test were to: 1) conduct a methodological experiment comparing respondent selection options; 2) conduct a test of questionnaire variations; 3) determine how long respondents take to complete the questionnaire in order to more accurately estimate burden; and 4) test the operational procedures that will be used on HINTS.
Cognitive testing for Cycle 2 instrument	0952-0589-03	2/23/12	Conducted on the 50% of items on the HINTS instrument that were changed from the Cycle 1 instrument. The testing was conducted to identify problems in question wording, context or order effects, as well as response difficulties as a result of the design and layout.
Cognitive testing for Cycle 3 instrument	0952-0589	12/31/12	Conducted on the 50% of items on the HINTS instrument that were not included on the Cycle 1 or Cycle 2 instrument. The testing was conducted to identify problems in question wording, context or order effects, as well as response difficulties as a result of the design and layout.