Debriefing Interview Protocol for Respondents and Non-respondents

Attachment E
Debriefing Interview Protocol for Respondents and Non respondents

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Protocol for Debriefing Interview – Respondents
Microbusiness Innovation Science and Technology Survey
Thank you for completing the MIST questionnaire and for agreeing to participate in this follow up interview. The
information you provide will help us to better understand your perspective and that of similar businesses. It will also assist
in the refinement to the microbusiness survey as we decide how to proceed in the future.
We would like to start with a few general questions, then later we’ll move on to ask about some particular items in the
questionnaire.
1. About how long did it take you to complete the questionnaire? __________minutes
2. What was your reaction when you first received information about the MIST survey? Why did you decide to
complete it? IF NEEDED: Were you interested in the topic of the survey? (Why or why not?)

__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
3. Did you look at the brochure you received with the questionnaire? [IF YES, CONTINUE]: What was your
impression of the brochure describing the survey? Did it change the likelihood of completing the survey? What, if
anything, would you suggest changing?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
4. [If offered incentive] What was your reaction to the financial incentive? Did it change the likelihood of your
responding?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
5. Did you have any problems completing the questionnaire on the web? If so, what were they? Did you encounter any
error messages while working on the questionnaire? What was your reaction to getting these messages?
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
6. Were there any questions that you had difficulty in answering? What were the reasons for the difficulty? ONLY IF
NEEDED: Were the instructions easy to understand, or not? IF NOT: Tell me more about that… Was the
information readily available, or not? Tell me more about that…
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__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
7. Were there any terms that were not defined and should be defined? If yes, which one(s)?
__________________________________________________________________________
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8. Do you have any comments or suggestions about the questionnaire? (IF NEEDED: Do you have any suggestions or
comments about the , content of the questions? The format? The appearance?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
Now let’s talk about some of the specific questions in the questionnaire that we might be able to improve for the future.
[INTERVIEWER: We’ll go through the questionnaire sequentially, asking all of the questions below that are in black and
covering the questions in red that apply to this company.]
9. How easy or difficult was it to use the categories in question 4 to provide a count of people in your company? Were
you able to specifically answer for the period including March 12, 2013, or did you give a general answer for the year
as a whole? Do your answers provide an accurate picture of what your company is doing? If we added together your
responses to 4a and 4c, that total should be the same as what appears on Form 941 that you submit to the IRS. Are
these the people that you think of as employees, or would you include any other people?
__________________________________________________________________________
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•

[If applicable] We noticed that you originally gave some responses to question 32 that did not match up with your
responses to question 4, and that you changed your responses after getting a computer prompt. Can you tell me
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what happened here?
[Read the items below that apply.]
In questions 4a and 4b, you said you had __ owners, but in question 32 you said you had __.
In question 4c, you said you had __ paid workers, but in question 32 you said you had __.
In question 4d, you said you had __ other paid workers, but in question 32 you said you had __.
In question 4e, you said you had __ unpaid workers, but in question 32 you said you had __.
What was the reason for the discrepancy? What could we have done on the questionnaire to help this match up?
•

[If applicable] We noticed that you originally gave some responses to question 32 that did not match up with your
responses to question 4, that you received a computer prompt asking about the discrepancy, and that you did not
change your responses. Can you tell me what happened here?
[Read the items below that apply.]
In questions 4a and 4b, you said you had __ owners, but in question 32 you said you had __.
In question 4c, you said you had __ paid workers, but in question 32 you said you had __.
In question 4d, you said you had __ other paid workers, but in question 32 you said you had __.
In question 4e, you said you had __ unpaid workers, but in question 32 you said you had __.
What was the reason for the discrepancy? What could we have done on the questionnaire to help this match up?

10. Please provide a short summary of the types of goods or services that your company produces, and the types of clients
you provide those goods/services to?
__________________________________________________________________________
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11. On question 11, we asked you to distinguish between goods and services. How easy or difficult was that to do?
Which of your products would you classify as goods and which as services?
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•
•
•
•

[If applicable] In question 11, you indicated that you had revenues from goods or services, but in question 15 you
said you had no products on the market during the last three years. What were you counting in question 11 that
wasn’t included in question 15? Why weren’t they included in question 15?
[If applicable] In question 11, the percentages you gave do not add up to 100 percent. What is the reason? [We
probably won’t ask this; usually the answer is obvious.]
[If applicable] In question 12, you said that 100 percent of your revenues for 2011 were domestic, but in question
13 you said you had revenues outside of the U.S. What years did you have revenues outside the U.S.? Why
weren’t they included in Question 12?
[If applicable] In question 12, you said that some of your revenues for 2011 were not domestic, but in question 13
you did not indicate any customers outside the U.S. [If applicable] In what countries besides the U.S. do you have
customers? Why weren’t they included for question 13?

12. You reported in questions 16 through 20 that you preformed certain kinds of innovation [list the items]. Please give us
some examples so we can better understand your responses. [Try to get examples for at least 5 of the items, if
applicable; however, don’t ask for more than 10 examples.]
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__________________________________________________________________________
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13. Would you consider these examples to be instances of innovation? What role, if any, is there for innovation in your
company? Are there any ways that you think of your company as being innovative that wouldn’t be captured by these
questions? Do you think a survey on innovation is relevant to your company?
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14. Do you think of your company as having any intellectual property that needs to be protected from other companies?
IF YES: Without telling us your protected information, what kinds of information are you thinking of? IF
NEEDED: Client contacts? Financial information? Production processes? What kinds of things do you cover in
nondisclosure agreements? How important do you think maintaining control over intellectual property is for your
industry overall?
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•

[If applicable] In questions 21 and 22, you indicated that you have no patents, but you indicated that patents were
important to you in question 24. What are your plans for using patents?

15. You reported in question 25 performing certain kinds of R&D [list the items]. Please give us some examples so we
can better understand your responses. [Try to get at least one example for each item marked.]
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
16. Did you have any difficulty giving answers on costs in questions 27 through 30? If you gave estimates, roughly how
accurate would you consider your responses?
__________________________________________________________________________
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•
•

[If applicable] In question 30 the percentages you gave do not add up to 100 percent. What is the reason? [We
probably won’t ask this; usually the answer is obvious.]
[If applicable] In question 31, the percentages you gave do not add up to 100 percent. What is the reason? [We
probably won’t ask this; usually the answer is obvious.]

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17. In section F, we asked some questions about your company strategies. Did these questions cover what is important to
your company, or not? Is there anything important that we are missing?
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18. Do you see the data collected in this survey as being important to your company? What data from the survey would
be helpful to you? How would you like the federal government to use the data?
__________________________________________________________________________
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19. Do your answers on this questionnaire provide a realistic impression of what is happening at your company with
regard to innovation, science, and technology, or not? Is there something we asked that would give us a misleading
impression? Is there something else we need to ask to properly understand your situation?
__________________________________________________________________________
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Thank you for your assistance.

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Protocol for Debriefing Interview – Non Respondents
Microbusiness Innovation Science and Technology Survey
Thank you for agreeing to discuss your thoughts about the MIST questionnaire. The information you provide will help us
to better understand your perspective and that of similar businesses. It will help us understand how to make the survey
more appealing to a wider group of microbusinesses and also assist in the refinement to the microbusiness survey as we
decide how to proceed in the future.
1. What is the primary reason that you did not complete the questionnaire? Were there any other reasons you did not
complete it?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
2. Did you look at the brochure describing the survey? [IF YES, CONTINUE]: What effect, if any, did it have on your
decision whether to complete the questionnaire? What, if anything, would you suggest changing?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
3. [If offered incentive] What was your reaction to the financial incentive? Did it change the likelihood of your
responding?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

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4. Did you look at the questionnaire? [IF YES, CONTINUE]: Which parts, if any, particularly influenced your decision
not to respond? [FOR EACH PART]: How did that affect your decision?
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
5. Did you have any problems getting to or working on the web questionnaire? If so, what were they? Did you
encounter any error messages while working on the questionnaire? What was your reaction to getting these
messages?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
6. If a paper copy of the questionnaire had been mailed to you, would that have changed your likelihood of responding?
[IF SO]: How? [IF NOT]: Why not?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
7. Please provide a short summary of the types of goods or services that your company produces, and the types of clients
you provide those goods/services to.
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

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8. Do you think of your company as being involved in research and development? [IF YES]: IN what ways? Do you
think of your company as being innovative? [IF YES]: In what ways?
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9. Do you see the data collected in this survey as being important to your company? What kinds of data would be
helpful to you?
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__________________________________________________________________________
10. What would increase your interest in completing this survey? Are there particular organizations whose endorsements
might have influenced you? If so, which ones? Are there particular topics that you think should be covered by the
survey, and that would increase your interest in the survey?
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Thank you for your assistance.

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