Form Attachment A - Attachment A - Phone Interview Protocol

Attachment A: Phone Protocol

Introduction script

Hi, may I speak to (respondent name)

My name is ___. I work for the Office of Survey Methods Research at the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

We are contacting you because you previously participated in the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) report – thank you! The Labor Department is requesting information from businesses like yours to improve our data. This study is being collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics under OMB No. 1220-0141. This voluntary survey will just take 5 to 10 minutes. The information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used for research purposes only.

If you have a few minutes now, we’d like to get your feedback.

(If not, ask to schedule a call-back time)

(If yes) Great, do you have access to your email at the moment? There are some documents that will help to see during our conversation

<Verify email address if there is one on file, and send screen shots of the data collection instruments>

<Verify they received the email>

<Read to respondent>

The BLS, its employees, agents, and partner statistical agencies, will use the information you provide for statistical purposes only and will hold the information in confidence to the full extent permitted by law. In accordance with the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (Title 5 of Public Law 107-347) and other applicable Federal laws, your responses will not be disclosed in identifiable form without your informed consent. Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, Federal information systems are protected from malicious activities through cybersecurity screening of transmitted data. The Privacy Act notice on the back of this form describes the conditions under which information related to this study will be used by BLS employees and agents.

Verify the business

First, we’d like to verify some information about your business.

The OES report collects occupation and wage information from businesses. Are you the person in your company who is responsible for responding to data requests like this at your location, <insert address>?

• Yes

• No (ask to speak to the person who handles data requests)

Point Estimate Feedback

Great, let’s take a look at that email I sent you, on page one. You should see a form with the following instructions at the top: “Please complete the form below, listing the job title, a description of duties, and the wage rate for each employee who worked during the pay period that included May 12, 2018.” Do you see that?

As you can see, the first column has a space for job title and a description of job duties. The second column has a space to indicate the wage rate. So in that example, you can see there is one accountant who earns 60k and another who earns 54k. Do you see that?

1. What would your initial reaction be if you were asked to fill this out for your location? _____

   • What do you think the form is asking you to write in?

2. Can you walk me through the process you’d use to fill this form out?

[Probes to select from; not all probes will be asked. At researcher’s discretion.]

• What records or reports would you have to access to get this information?

• Do those give you this information directly, or would you have to do something custom or manual?

• What challenges might be involved?

• Would this require additional consultation with other employees?

• Looking up records in another place?

• Generating a spreadsheet from payroll software?

• Recall from memory?

• Calculations?

• Guessing or estimating?

3. How long do you think it’d take you to fill it out?

4. As you can see on the example, we’re asking for exact wage rates for each occupation. Are exact wage levels available in your current records?

5. Would you be able to export a report or spreadsheet that could be sent to BLS instead of you filling out the form? How easy or difficult would it be for you to get such a report?

6. Do employees with the same job title and duties typically make the same wages, or does it vary?

   • How much does it vary?

   • Would you be able to list each occupation that makes a different wage separately? How would you go about that?

7. Do you think it would be easy or difficult to provide exact wages for each of your employees?

8. Would you be willing to report exact wage data for your employees, or not? For what reasons?

   • Would you have any concerns about providing this information to the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

9. How confident would you be in the accuracy of the exact wage amounts you report?

[Other emergent probes as needed]

Comparison to Wage Ranges

Let’s look at page 2 of the email I sent you. Here you see another form, similar to the previous one. But this one includes income ranges. So instead of providing exact wage amounts for each occupation, for this form, you would indicate the number of employees that fall into each wage range. You can see the example for Registered Nurses on the email.

• What are your reactions to providing wage data in ranges instead of the exact amounts?

• How does this approach compare to the previous one, where you would indicate exact wage amounts?

• Do you prefer one approach over the other? For what reasons?

Conclusion

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics currently collects wage information in these ranges, but is looking to get specific wages instead as they provide much more information about the US Economy. We’re doing these interviews to understand if respondents like yourself would be able, and willing, to provide the more specific information. In general, do you think your company would be able and willing to provide specific wages?

• Do you have any comments on suggestions on how we could make it easier for companies to give us this important information?

Thank you for talking to us! We appreciate your time.

E-mail text to be sent:

Hello,

Thank you for agreeing to help the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics with a brief research study to improve our data.

Please see the attached pdf titled “OES Data” for your reference during our phone call.

Thank you again for your help!

You should be aware that use of email involves certain inherent risks to the confidentiality of your data.  We advise sending this information in an encrypted manner.

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