Non-substantive Change Request for CAIR Surveys, Nov 2015

Non-substantive Change Request

0535-0254 – Current Agricultural Industrial Reports (CAIR) Surveys – Dec. 2015

In 2014 when NASS took over eight of the forty-seven Current Industrial Reports (CIR) (OMB # 0607-0476) from the Census Bureau, NASS was unable to obtain the lists of businesses which the Census Bureau used to conduct the CIRs. Subsequently, NASS undertook a list building effort, which involved communicating with various industry leaders in order to obtain names, internet searches for businesses of possible interest, and obtaining names from trade magazines and various literature.

NASS then conducted a “screening” survey from the names obtained from these various sources for the purpose of:

1. Determine if the businesses were still operating.

2. Determine if the businesses produced the items of interest.

3. Introduce these businesses to NASS, and let them know that we were now conducting these surveys.

As a result of the screening phase NASS was able to determine a population of operations which qualified for the Current Agricultural Industrial Report (CAIR) surveys. Operations that did not qualify or no longer qualified for these surveys were removed from the population. NASS also made contact with the corporate level of many of these operations that had multiple locations and were able to work out an arrangement where we collect total data from one centralized location rather than from each individual location.

After the initial rounds of data collection, we found it necessary to make several non-substantive changes to the questionnaires to make it easier for the respondents to reply. These changes included:

• Adding improved instructions and include/exclude statements to make it easier for the respondents to reply,

• NASS combined the four oil and fat surveys the Census Bureau conducted previously into one survey utilizing one questionnaire which included all the items of interest.

• Changing the Flour Milling Products from a monthly survey to a quarterly survey.

As a result of our efforts, NASS will be able to reduce the future screening from 15,000 per year down to 700 per year. The combining of the four oil and fat surveys into one questionnaire and collecting the data from a centralized location will reduce the number of mailed questionnaires from 1,450 to 175. The screening phase and the centralization of reporting units reduced the number of contacts and total burden.

The following table shows the reductions in burden and number of respondents as a result of these non-substantive changes.