Protocol

How-To Videos Protocol

Rebecca Keegan, Alda Rivas, Amy Anderson Riemer, Temika Holland

Thank you for your time today. My name is _____ and I work with the United States Census Bureau. My research team evaluates how easy or difficult Census products are to use. What works well, we keep. When potential users, such as you, have difficulty with something, we have an opportunity to fix it.

Before we start, there is a form I would like you to read and sign. It explains the purpose of today’s session and your rights as a participant. It also informs you that we would like to record the session to get an accurate record of your feedback. Only those of us connected with the project will review the recording and it will be used solely for research purposes. Your name will not be associated with the recording or any of the other data collected during the session.

Hand consent form; give time for participant to read and sign; sign own name and date, start CAMTASIA recording.]

Thank you.

Next, I would like for you to complete a demographic and Internet experience questionnaire. This provides us with additional information about the participants taking part in the evaluation.

Hand participant the Demographic questionnaire; give time for participant to read and complete the document.

Thank you.

I am going to give you a little background about what we will be working on today. Today you will be helping us to evaluate some new features of the online 2017 Economic Census instrument. The online survey is still in development and we are interested in obtaining feedback to ensure that it has all of the information and features needed.

To do this, we will have you complete some tasks and interact with the site. There are no right or wrong answers, we are mainly interested in your impressions both good and bad about your experience. I did not create the instrument so please feel free to share both positive and negative reactions.

While you are completing the tasks I would like for you to think aloud. Essentially what this means is to verbally express what you are doing and experiencing as you use the site.

I may ask you additional questions about some of the screens you see today and your overall impressions.

Do you have any questions before we begin? Ok let’s get started. I’d like to get a little background about you first.

• How long have you worked in your current position?

• What are your major duties in your position?

• What type of experience have you had with completing online surveys for the government? Have you recently completed any surveys online for the Census Bureau?

• (if yes) Have you ever experienced any issues with using the online site for our surveys? If so, please explain. How did you go about getting those issues resolved?

I want you to read each scenario and use the website to complete the task associated with each scenario.

Hand participant tasks- have them complete tasks one at a time. Have participant read each task aloud before they begin.

Once all tasks are complete:

Next I would like for you to view each video listed here, and I will have you rate your overall experience for each one.

Hand the participant the Satisfaction questionnaire after each video.

Before we wrap up, I’d like to have you answer some questions regarding your computer and internet experience.

Hand participant the Computer/Internet Experience survey; give time for participant to read and complete the document.

[Debriefing]

• Now that you’ve had a chance to go through the site, I’d like to show you several potential options for the location of these videos. Please select which option you feel is the best location. Why?

• Overall, what are your thoughts about including how-to-videos on one of our web surveys?

• Do you think that respondents such as yourself would watch the videos?

• Are there any topics or areas that weren’t addressed in the how-to-videos that we should consider for the future?

• Do you have any other recommendations for how we could improve the assistance we provide within the website overall, not just with videos?

• Do you have any suggestions regarding how to encourage respondents to access these videos?

Ask any pertinent debriefing questions

This concludes our session. Thank you for your time and valuable feedback!