NLSY97_R19_OMB_justification_Part_A_2019_OMB_NLS

Information Collection Request for

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997

OMB # 1220-0157

Summary and Part A

Submitted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summary 1

Supporting Statement 2

A. Justification 2

1. Necessity for the Information Collection 2

2. Purpose of Survey and Use of the Information 2

3. Use of Electronic Collection Methods 4

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication 6

5. Impact on Small Businesses 7

6. Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection 7

7. Special Circumstances 10

8. Federal Register Notice and Consultations 10

9. Payment to Respondents 11

10. Confidentiality of Data 18

a. BLS Confidentiality Policy 18

b. Contractor Confidentiality Safeguards 19

11. Sensitive Questions 21

12. Estimation of Information Collection Burden 24

13. Cost Burden to Respondents or Record Keepers 27

14. Estimate of Cost to the Federal Government 27

15. Changes in Respondent Burden 28

16. Plans and Time Schedule for Information Collection, Tabulation, and Publication 28

17. Request Not to Display OMB Expiration Date 28

18. Exceptions to “Certificate for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions” 28

Summary

This package requests clearance for main fielding of Round 19 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The main NLSY97 sample includes 8,984 respondents who were born in the years 1980 through 1984 and lived in the United States when the survey began in 1997. Sample selection was based on information provided during the first round of interviews. This cohort is a representative national sample of the target population of young adults. The sample includes an overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics to facilitate statistically reliable analyses of these racial and ethnic groups. Appropriate weights are provided so that the sample components can be combined in a manner to aggregate to the overall U.S. population of the same ages.

The NLSY97 pretest sample includes 201 respondents who were born in the years 1979 through 1984 and lived in the United States at the time of the initial pretest fielding in 1996. Pretest data are used only for project operational and methodological information and are not released to individuals outside of the project team. The pretest sample will not be fielded as part of Round 19.

The survey is funded primarily by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics at the U.S. Department of Labor. Additional funding has been provided in some years by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, and Justice, and the National Science Foundation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has overall responsibility for the project. The BLS has contracted with the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) at the Ohio State University to conduct the survey. The contractor is responsible for survey design, interviewing, data preparation, documentation, and the preparation of public-use data files.

The data collected in this survey are part of a larger effort that involves repeated interviews administered to a number of cohorts in the U.S. Many of the questions are identical or very similar to questions previously approved by OMB that have been asked in other cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS). This round will be the second in which the NLSY97 interviews will be conducted primarily by telephone.

Supporting Statement

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97)

A Survey of Persons who were Ages 12 to 16 on December 31, 1996

Rationale, Objectives, and Analysis of Content

A. Justification

1. Necessity for the Information Collection

This statement covers main fielding of Round 19 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The NLSY97 is a nationally representative sample of persons who were ages 12 to 16 on December 31, 1996. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) contracts with external organizations to interview these youths, to study how young people make the transition from full-time schooling to the establishment of their families and careers. Interviews were conducted on a yearly basis through Round 15; beginning with Round 16 they are interviewed on a biennial basis. The longitudinal focus of this survey requires information to be collected about the same individuals over many years in order to trace their education, training, work experience, fertility, income, and program participation.

The mission of the Department of Labor (DOL) is, among other things, to promote the development of the U.S. labor force and the efficiency of the U.S. labor market. The BLS contributes to this mission by gathering information about the labor force and labor market and disseminating it to policymakers and the public so that participants in those markets can make more informed and, thus more efficient, choices. The charge to the BLS to collect data related to the labor force is extremely broad, as reflected in Title 29 USC Section 1:

“The general design and duties of the Bureau of Labor Statistics shall be to acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with labor, in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and especially upon its relation to capital, the hours of labor, the earnings of laboring men and women, and the means of promoting their material, social, intellectual, and moral prosperity.”

The collection of these data contributes to the BLS mission by aiding in the understanding of labor market outcomes faced by individuals in the early stages of career and family development. See attachment 1 for Title 29 USC Sections 1 and 2.

2. Purpose of the Survey and Use of the Information

The major purpose of the data collection is to examine the transition from school to the labor market and into adulthood. The study relates each respondent’s educational, family, and community background to his or her success in finding a job and establishing a career. During Round 1, the study included a testing component sponsored by the Department of Defense that assessed the aptitude and achievement of the youths in the study so that these factors can be related to career outcomes. This study, begun when most participants were in middle school or high school, has followed them as they enter college or training programs and join the labor force. Continued biennial interviews will allow researchers and policymakers to examine the transition from school to work. This study will help researchers and policymakers to identify the antecedents and causes for difficulties some youths experience in making the school-to-work transition. By comparing these data to similar data from previous NLS cohorts, researchers and policymakers will be able to identify and understand some of the dynamics of the labor market and whether and how the experiences of this cohort of young people differ from those of earlier cohorts.

The NLSY97 has several characteristics that distinguish it from other data sources and make it uniquely capable of meeting the goals described above. The first of these is the breadth and depth of the types of information that are being collected. It has become increasingly evident in recent years that a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of labor force activity requires a theoretical framework that draws on several disciplines, particularly economics, sociology, and psychology. For example, the exploration of the determinants and consequences of the labor force behavior and experience of this cohort requires information about (1) the individual’s family background and ongoing demographic experiences; (2) the character of all aspects of the environment with which the individual interacts; (3) human capital inputs such as formal schooling and training; (4) a complete record of the individual’s work experiences; (5) the behaviors, attitudes, and experiences of family members, including spouses and children; and (6) a variety of social psychological measures, including attitudes toward specific and general work situations, personal feelings about the future, and perceptions of how much control one has over one’s environment.

A second major advantage of the NLSY97 is its longitudinal design. This design permits investigations of labor market dynamics that would not be possible with one-time surveys and allows directions of causation to be established with much greater confidence than cross-sectional analyses permit. Also, the considerable geographic and environment information available for each respondent for each survey year permits a more careful examination of the impact that local labor market conditions have on the employment, education, and family experiences of this cohort.

Third, the supplemental samples of blacks and Hispanics make possible more detailed statistical analyses of those groups than would otherwise be possible.

The NLSY97 is part of a broader group of surveys that are known as the BLS National Longitudinal Surveys program. In 1966, the first interviews were administered to persons representing two cohorts, Older Men ages 45-59 in 1966 and Young Men ages 14-24 in 1966. The sample of Mature Women ages 30-44 in 1967 was first interviewed in 1967. The last of the original four cohorts was the Young Women, who were ages 14-24 when first interviewed in 1968. The survey of Young Men was discontinued after the 1981 interview, and the last survey of the Older Men was conducted in 1990. The Young and Mature Women surveys were discontinued after the 2003 interviews. In 1979, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79 – OMB Clearance Number 1220-0109), which includes persons who were ages 14-21 on December 31, 1978, began. The NLSY79 was conducted yearly from 1979 to 1994 and has been conducted every two years since 1994. One of the objectives of the National Longitudinal Surveys program is to examine how well the nation is able to incorporate young people into the labor market. These earlier surveys provide comparable data for the NLSY97.

The National Longitudinal Surveys are used by BLS and other government agencies to examine a wide range of labor market issues. The most recent BLS news release that examines NLSY97 data was published on April 17, 2018, and is available online at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsyth.pdf. In addition to BLS publications, analyses have been conducted in recent years by other agencies of the Executive Branch, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office. The surveys also are used extensively by researchers in a variety of academic fields. A comprehensive bibliography of journal articles, dissertations, and other research that have examined data from all National Longitudinal Surveys cohorts is available at http://www.nlsbibliography.org/.

This round also requests permission for interim contact with sample members in an attempt to keep them engaged and connected with the survey and maintain response rates. A detailed proposal will be submitted to OMB via a non-substantive change.

More information about survey applications is provided in attachment 2.

3. Use of Electronic Collection Methods

The NLS program and its contractors have led the industry in survey automation and continue to use up-to-date methods for the NLSY97. This includes the continued use of computer-assisted interviewing (CAI) for the survey.

In Round 19, we propose to collect data primarily by telephone, as in Round 18. While historically an in-person survey, in Round 18 it was converted to a predominantly telephone survey. We anticipate that at least 80 percent of interviews will be completed by telephone. Approximately 90 percent were collected via telephone in Round 18, in contrast to 27 percent in Round 17 and 15 percent in Round 16.

Extensive minor edits were made to adapt the Round 18 instrument for predominantly telephone administration, including the removal of references to showcards, introductory statements, reduction of self-administered content, and shortening of code frames. With these edits, we anticipated somewhat longer timings for Round 18, but the survey ran longer than we projected. Average timings in Round 18 increased by approximately 3 minutes from Round 17. We propose to further streamline the survey for Round 19.

We propose to collect fewer characteristics about people other than the respondent, for instance, other members of the respondent’s household and the respondent’s parents. We propose to collect fewer details about the respondent’s college attendance and time use. To some extent, these deletions will be offset by additions to the survey on pain, mental health, and internet access. The proposed changes are detailed in Appendix 5.

Item non-response rates may increase in response to the change in mode. Sensitive items have consistently been found to be under-reported in interviewer-administered versus self-administered modes (Tourangeau and Yan, Psychological Bulletin 2007, Vol. 133, No. 5, 859–883). For drug use, for example, estimates of under-reporting range from 19 to 30 percent across multiple meta-analyses of experimental and quasi-experimental studies (Tourangeau and Yan 2007, Richmand, Kiesler, Weisband, and Drasgow 1999).

In contrast, face-to-face interviewing has been found to lead to under-reporting of sensitive items relative to telephone interviewing. Thus, sensitive items that had previously been interviewer-administered in-person but will now be interviewer-administered by telephone may experience decreases in item non-response. Income and other financial items would be the chief examples of such items. (de Leeuw E.D., van der Zouwen J. (1988). “Data quality in telephone and face to face surveys: a comparative metaanalysis.” In: Groves RM, Biemer PP, Lyberg LE, Massey JT, Nicholls WL II, Waksberg J, eds. Telephone Survey Methodology, New York: Wiley: 273:99). Item non-response did decrease from Round 17 to Round 18 for income and financial items. For instance, the percentage of respondents reporting don’t know on the item asking about wages or salary from work fell from 14 to 8.

The NLSY97 Round 19 will maintain the shift to predominantly telephone rather than in-person administration, but build on lessons learned in Round 18.  We propose a case managed approach from the beginning of the field period.  We will complete 80% or more of the cases by telephone as all initial efforts will be mail, email, text, and phone but this approach allows us to provide strategic direction to our interviewers about how and when to work cases. We plan a targeted sequence of outreach methods based on the cooperativeness of the respondents in past rounds and the efforts it took to get to their final status in Round 18. As in Round 18, we will attempt to complete these interviews by telephone, employing in-person interviews as a non-response follow-up strategy for cases that cannot be completed by telephone. For example, cases may be fielded in-person because the respondent cannot be located without in-person efforts, respondent refuses telephone interview, the respondent does not have a telephone, respondent is a prison case where only in-person interview is approved, or respondent has a physical or mental disability that prevents telephone administration.  In-person interviewing has been deployed similarly on the NLSY79 since it became primarily a telephone data collection effort in 2002.

In order to carefully meter the number of in-person interviews that will be conducted, we will employ practices that we have used for years on the NLSY79 and Round 18 of the NLSY97 to limit the number of in-person interviews conducted. In-person interviewing will not be available during the first few months of the field period; when available, field managers will issue prior approval for an in-person interview. This approval will be based on the facts of the case; hearing-related disability or inadequate telephone service will be readily approved for in-person interviewing. Respondent preferences for in-person interviews will first be addressed through further gaining cooperation activities and then only approved for in-person interviewing when interviewers and field manager believe that the only alternative to in-person interview is respondent non-interview. The metering of in-person interviews will be rather straightforward, since the opportunities for in-person interview will be very limited; the staffing model for Round 19 will be geographically diverse to permit substantial in-person outreach, but will take advantage of phone staffing efficiencies that will leave some sample members reachable by field staff only through long-distance travel. 

Other than interviews that cannot be completed by telephone (prison, disability, etc.), we expect that remaining in-person interviews will come about primarily because cases required in-person locating and gaining cooperation activities to secure an interview. We will not forego an opportunity for an in-person interview with a chronically non-cooperative individual if such an opportunity presents itself.

Computer assisted interviews can reduce respondent burden and produce data that can be prepared for release and analysis faster and more accurately than is the case with pencil-and-paper interviews.

Mode experiments on another NLS cohort showed that the same interview took 10 percent less time to administer using a computer. In addition, cases collected by phone ran approximately 5 minutes longer than those collected in-person in Round 17 of the NLSY97.

In Round 19, we will offer electronic payment of incentives to minimize the time between interview and payment. Some respondents reported that they preferred an in-person interview and having the same interviewer each round. In Round 19, we will use a case-managed interview system that assigns cases to a particular field interviewer from the start. Where possible, cases will be assigned to the same interviewer as past rounds. Some respondents reported concerns about losing the self-administered mode for sensitive questions. Some of the most sensitive of these were dropped in Round 18. We have made additional deletions for Round 19. In addition, as in Round 18, the wording has been changed so that those overhearing responses will not be able to infer the content of the questions from the respondent’s answers. Since text messaging is a preferred mode of communication for the age group of the NLSY97 cohort, field interviewers are issued cell phones by the contractor to increase their responsiveness to text messages and emails. This reduces the response time to the respondents and accommodates the respondent’s preferred mode of communication. These cell phones are returned to the contractor and wiped of all respondent information at the end of the field period. Additionally, in limited situations where the respondent does not have their own phone or the ability to borrow someone’s phone for the length of the interview, the project will send a pre-paid cell phone to the respondent with enough minutes to allow the respondent the opportunity to participate.

Finally, the use of computer-assisted recorded interviewing (CARI) reduces respondent burden by using recordings of the main interview for data quality assurance as a replacement for post-interview validation calls. During Round 19, we also will allow respondents to use web-based technology to schedule their appointments, providing high levels of convenience (and therefore lower burden) for respondents.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

We do not know of a national longitudinal survey that samples this age bracket and explores an equivalent breadth of substantive topics including labor market status and characteristics of jobs, education, training, aptitudes, health, fertility, marital history, income and assets, participation in government programs, attitudes, sexual activity, criminal and delinquent behavior, household environment, and military experiences. Data collection for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) is less frequent and addresses physical and social health-related behaviors rather than focusing on labor market experiences. The studies sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics do not include the birth cohorts 1980 through 1984. The Children of the NLSY79, also part of the NLS program, spans the NLSY97 age range and touches on many of the same subjects, but does not yield nationally representative estimates for these birth cohorts. Further, the NLSY97 is a valuable part of the NLS program as a whole, and other surveys would not permit the kinds of cross-cohort analyses that are possible using the various cohorts of the NLS program.

The repeated collection of NLSY97 information permits consideration of employment, education, and family issues in ways not possible with any other available data set. The combination of (1) longitudinal data covering the time from adolescence; (2) a focus on youths and young adults; (3) national representation; (4) large minority samples; and (5) detailed availability of education, employment and training, demographic, health, child outcome, and social-psychological variables make this data set and its utility for social science policy research on youth issues unique.

5. Impact on Small Businesses

The NLSY97 is a survey of individuals in household and family units and therefore does not involve small organizations.

6. Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

Prior to Round 16, the NLSY97 was conducted annually, and that frequency has been essential for accurately capturing the educational, training, labor market, and household transitions that young people typically experience. Starting in Round 16 data collection changed to a biennial schedule. As NLSY97 respondents age, they experience fewer educational and labor market transitions which make biennial data collection more feasible.

In Round 16 (the first biennial interview), we continued to collect event histories since the date of last interview for employment, marriage, fertility, and schooling in order to maintain the detailed event history data we have collected since Round 1. However, in other domains the reference period for the interview questions was the last 12 months, which would not increase the length of the recall period for most respondents. As in prior rounds, we continued to use memory aides and bounding techniques in our interviewing to elicit accurate recall of events and dates. For Round 19, we do not propose any further changes to the instrument to accommodate biennial interviewing.

We did experience a decline in retention rate in Rounds 16 and 17, much like the decline experienced by the NLSY79 in its transition to biennial interviewing. The likely causes of the decline in Round 16 were manifold, including a pause in data collection related to a partial shutdown of the federal government, as well as an extremely severe winter that hampered travel, staff and respondent availability, and communications. The decline in retention rate in Round 18 was larger than expected. We propose to adjust fielding procedures in Round 19 in an attempt to bring sample members back to the survey. We are still investigating any bias resulting from this decline in retention rate. Tables 1a, 1b, and 1c below provide an initial examination, comparing the proportion of NLSY97 respondents not completing the Round 17, Round 16, and Round 13 interviews across the main sampling cells (gender*birth year*race/ethnicity). We see the same patterns in both rounds: men are more likely to be non-respondents than women, non-black/non-Hispanic respondents are more likely to be non-respondents than black and/or Hispanic respondents, and the two youngest birth cohorts (1983 and 1984) are somewhat less likely to non-respond. The differences in proportions are larger for every comparison in Round 17 than in Round 13. The proportions look very similar to round 16.

Table 1a. Proportion of NLSY97 Respondents Not Completing Round 17 Interview, by Gender, Birth Year, and Race/Ethnicity
	Black/AfrAm, Non- Hispanic	Latino/ Hispanic	Mixed Race	Non-Black, Non-Hispanic	Total	# of cases
Male	0.192	0.227	0.175	0.257	0.234	4599
1980	0.241	0.239	0.182	0.282	0.261	854
1981	0.203	0.200	0.333	0.259	0.232	947
1982	0.192	0.257	0.100	0.263	0.240	953
1983	0.170	0.211	0.250	0.247	0.221	934
1984	0.158	0.231	0.111	0.238	0.216	911
Female	0.118	0.172	0.186	0.222	0.184	4385
1980	0.141	0.220	0.200	0.254	0.211	837
1981	0.150	0.172	0.400	0.248	0.210	927
1982	0.092	0.141	0.222	0.191	0.155	888
1983	0.115	0.175	0.100	0.208	0.175	873
1984	0.089	0.163	0.000	0.211	0.166	860
Grand Total	0.155	0.200	0.181	0.241	0.209	8984
# of cases	2335	1901	83	4665	8984

Table 1b. Proportion of NLSY97 Respondents Not Completing Round 16 Interview, by Gender, Birth Year, and Race/Ethnicity
Row Labels	Black/AfrAm, Non- Hispanic	Latino/ Hispanic	Mixed Race	Non-Black, Non-Hispanic	Total	# of cases
Male	0.196	0.225	0.150	0.248	0.229	4599
1980	0.236	0.250	0.182	0.280	0.261	854
1981	0.175	0.171	0.333	0.237	0.207	947
1982	0.233	0.267	0.100	0.272	0.258	953
1983	0.152	0.191	0.000	0.233	0.203	934
1984	0.181	0.251	0.111	0.223	0.218	911
Female	0.114	0.162	0.233	0.220	0.180	4385
1980	0.148	0.189	0.200	0.222	0.192	837
1981	0.146	0.135	0.400	0.234	0.194	927
1982	0.078	0.141	0.333	0.209	0.162	888
1983	0.111	0.175	0.200	0.212	0.178	873
1984	0.080	0.179	0.000	0.222	0.173	860
Grand Total	0.155	0.195	0.193	0.235	0.205	8984
# of cases	2335	1901	83	4665	8984

Table 1c. Proportion of NLSY97 Respondents Not Completing Round 13 Interview, by Gender, Birth Year, and Race/Ethnicity

Row Labels	Black/AfrAm, Non- Hispanic	Latino/ Hispanic	Mixed Race	Non-Black, Non-Hispanic	Total	# of cases
Male	0.168	0.162	0.100	0.189	0.177	4599
1980	0.193	0.176	0.091	0.203	0.193	854
1981	0.167	0.195	0.167	0.222	0.202	947
1982	0.165	0.162	0.100	0.198	0.180	953
1983	0.161	0.134	0.000	0.176	0.163	934
1984	0.153	0.141	0.111	0.148	0.147	911
Female	0.087	0.120	0.116	0.175	0.139	4385
1980	0.106	0.126	0.200	0.183	0.148	837
1981	0.106	0.125	0.200	0.192	0.157	927
1982	0.069	0.073	0.111	0.158	0.116	888
1983	0.098	0.119	0.100	0.166	0.137	873
1984	0.053	0.163	0.000	0.172	0.137	860
Grand Total	0.128	0.142	0.108	0.182	0.159	8984
# of cases	2335	1901	83	4665	8984

Note: Tables 1a through 1c comparisons do not take into account mortality.

Table 1d shows the retention rates experienced on the NLSY79 and the NLSY97 just before and after the transition from annual to biennial interviewing. Although there were important extenuating circumstances affecting the Round 16 NLSY97 fielding, the drop in response rates in the first, second, and third biennial year was 2.3, 2.1, and 2.4 percent for the NLSY79 and 3.1, 0.2, and 3.9 percent for the NLSY97. The higher decline in the third biennial year for the NLSY97 may be a result of the change in mode to a telephone survey.

Table 1d. NLSY79 and NLSY97 Retention Rates Surrounding the Transition to Biennial Interviewing

	NLSY79 Retention Rate* (Year)	NLSY97 Retention Rate* (Year) (Round)
2 rounds prior to transition to biennial	92.1 (1993) (R15)	83.7 (2010) (R14)
Round prior to transition to biennial	91.1 (1994) (R16)	83.9 (2011) (R15)
First round after 2-year gap	88.8 (1996) (R17)	80.8 (2013) (R16)
2nd round after transition to biennial	86.7 (1998) (R18)	80.6 (2015) (R17)
3rd round after transition to biennial	84.3 (2000) (R19)	76.7 (2017) (R18)

* Retention rates exclude deceased and out of sample cases.

7. Special Circumstances

None of the listed special circumstances apply.

8. Federal Register Notice and Consultations

No comments were received as a result of the Federal Register notice published in 84 FR 3496 on February 12, 2019.

There have been numerous consultations regarding the NLSY97. In 1988, the National Science Foundation sponsored a conference to consider the future of the NLS. This conference consisted of representatives from a variety of academic, government and nonprofit research and policy organizations. The participants endorsed the notion of conducting a new youth survey. The NLSY97 incorporates many of the major recommendations that came out of that conference.

The NLS program also has a technical review committee that provides advice on interview content and long-term objectives. This group typically meets twice each year. Table 2 below shows the current members of the committee.

Table 2. National Longitudinal Surveys Technical Review Committee (2018)

Shawn Bushway Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy Department of Public Administration and Policy University at Albany	Jennie Brand Departments of Sociology And Statistics University of California, Los Angeles	Sarah Burgard Department of Sociology University of Michigan
Judith Hellerstein Department of Economics University of Maryland	David Johnson Survey Research Center University of Michigan	Michael Lovenheim Departments of Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations, and Policy Analysis and Management Cornell University
Kathleen McGarry Department of Economics University of California, Los Angeles	Melissa McInerney Department of Economics Tufts University	Kristen Olson Department of Sociology University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Rebecca Ryan Department of Psychology Georgetown University	Jeffrey Smith Department of Economics University of Wisconsin

9. Payment to Respondents

The NLSY97 is a long-term study in which the same respondents have been interviewed on an annual basis. Beginning with Round 16, the interval period between interviews moved to two years. Because minimizing sample attrition is critical to sustaining this type of longitudinal study, respondents in all prior rounds have been offered financial and in-kind incentives as a means of securing their long-term cooperation and slowing the decline in response rates.

Evidence shows that incentives can have positive effects on both respondent and interviewer behavior, and therefore are indispensable in reaching the project response rates. Incentives result in conversions among those least likely to participate and quicker cooperation among the more likely. Small increases or one-time bonuses can have a halo effect that results in future participation.¹ Many interviewers find that having something to offer respondents, such as a monetary incentive, additional in-kind offering, or new conversion materials, allows them to open the dialogue with formerly reluctant respondents. Interviewers want a variety of options to respond to the particular needs, issues, and objections of the respondent. Fully loaded, interviewer costs come to around $36 per hour (not including SCA benefits), and interviewers spent an average of more than 9 hours to obtain each interview in Round 18. If incentives reduce this time by only 5%, nearly $112,000 in interviewer costs are saved. This savings amounts to $112,000/6520=$17.18 per respondent compared to our proposed additional incentive cost of $4.12 per respondent.²

In Round 19, we will predominantly be completing interviews by phone. We employ a base fee for all respondents. For those who returned in R18 and again in R19, they would receive another “R18 returner incentive” to cement their engagement with the survey. For those respondents out 1-5 rounds and those out for 5 or more rounds, we will use a graduated missed round incentive to encourage response to Round 19. Round 19 will also utilize several additional incentive strategies similar to those used in Rounds 14-18, including a final push and enhanced final push, web appointment setting incentives, small in-kind offering, and missed round incentives.

Respondents will be able to receive their payments electronically through Paypal or Zelle. Electronic payments were offered to all respondents in Round 18. We propose to offer them again to all respondents and use electronic payment as default for those who received electronic payment in Round 18.

For the purpose of this discussion, a brief summary of the respondent pools and incentive types is provided below.

Respondent Pools

For the Round 19 incentive plan, respondents are grouped into one of four major categories:

1. Respondents who completed Round 18 and had also completed Round 17;

2. Respondents who completed Round 18 but had not completed Round 17;

3. Respondents who missed Round 18 but completed at least once since Round 14;

4. Respondents who have not completed any interviews during or since Round 14 and are not known to be deceased.

Exhibit 1. Round 19 Respondent Pools

Incentive Types

The Round 19 incentive strategy includes a base incentive increased to $50 (from $40), small discretionary supplements, and payments for missed interviews. In addition, a two-level final push incentive for individuals for whom the standard protocol has been unsuccessful in securing cooperation is proposed for Round 19.

Table 1. Round 19 Incentive Structure

	Group 1	Group 2	Group 3				Group 4
Incentive Type	R18 Completers who previously responded	R18 Completers: who did not complete R17	Missed R18 only	Missed R18 and R17	Missed R18, R17, and R16	Missed R18, R17, R16, and R15	Missed all of the prior 5 rounds
Base	$50	$50	$50	$50	$50	$50	$50
Returned in R18		$30
Returned in R19	-		$40	$60	$80	$100	$150
Final Push	$25	$25	$25	$25	$25	$25	$25
Enhanced Final Push	$25	$25	$25	$25	$25	$25	$25
Min	$50	$80	$90	$110	$130	$150	$200
Max	$100	$130	$140	$160	$180	$200	$250
Typical	$50	$80	$90	$110	$130	$150	$200
Incentive Enhancements
Token In-Kind	Up to $10 per respondent for up to 3,000 respondents may be spent on in-kind token items. The distribution of these respondents across the almost 9,000 respondents in the above four groups is not known ex ante.

Base Incentive

A base incentive will be given to all respondents who complete the Round 19 interview. The $40 base has been the same since Round 16 so we propose an increase to $50 for main study respondents. We propose a modest increase in the base respondent incentive in response to a range of factors:

1) The NLSY97 cohort are now in their late thirties, and have experienced considerable wage growth in the past 6 years. We want to be respectful that their time is valuable.

2) In addition, the BLS inflation rate calculator indicates that prices have increased 10 percent from 2013 (when Round 16 began) to 2019.

3) Respondents indicate that project communications that their data are valuable and needed should be supported by at least token indications of value.

4) Field interviewers, too, feel that incremental increases in incentives allow them to communicate additional evidence of value to respondents.

5) Increasing the base incentive allows us to express gratitude to all of our respondents, while many of our incentives are directed toward less cooperative respondents.

R18 Returner Incentive

Respondents who returned in Round 18 would receive an additional $30 for again participating in Round 19 to cement their engagement and hopefully retain them for future rounds. This amount retains incentive compatibility in the sense that it is not monetarily beneficial for respondents to intentionally skip a round. In particular, a respondent who only missed Round 16 would receive larger incentive payments over Rounds 17-19 if they respond in Round 17-Round 19 or if they skip Round 17 and returned in Round 18 to receive the Round 18 returner incentive.³

This also aligns with the results of the “thank you” incentive that we used in Round 14 of the NLSY, which showed an increase in completion rates in future rounds based on a “thank you” bonus that was awarded for participating in prior consecutive rounds. For example, cooperative respondents who were offered a ‘thank you’ bonus in Round 13 completed at 2.1 percentage points higher rates than a control group of cooperative respondents in that round. Although the R13 bonus recipients received only base incentives (no bonus) in Rounds 14 and 15, they again exhibited 2.2 percentage points higher completion rates than a control group of cooperative respondents who received no bonus in either year. Similar upticks of 1.7 to 2.4 percentage points were found in other rounds for the bonus year as well as the first and second years thereafter (when no bonuses were paid to those individuals).

Missed Round Incentive

Payments for missed rounds are designed to encourage attriters to return to the study. Anyone returning after only missing Round 18 would receive a $40 returning bonus in Round 19 in addition to the base. This bonus would increase by an additional $20 for up to four rounds out (for example, a respondent returning after four rounds out would receive $50 + $40 + 3*$20 = $150 including the base fee). Those out for 5 or more rounds would receive $150 on top of the base of $50 for a total of $200 to return in Round 19. Results of the NIR bonus experiment in R18 in Table 5 show that this $200 bonus resulted in roughly twice the number of completes compared to a control group that received a $105 incentive (inclusive of the base fee).

Table 2. Round 18 NIR Bonus Experiment among Respondents Last Completing in Round 13 or earlier

NIR Bonus Received	Total Respondents	Completed Cases	% Complete (Total)
Control	389	33	8.48%
Treatment	170	27	15.88%

Token In-Kind Incentive 

The field staff repeatedly mentioned the value of token in-kind gifts during the round 18 debriefing. We are asking to use in-kind gifts with a maximum of $10 value for as many as 3,000 respondents and propose to use them in mailings or in door hangers, as listed in Table 1.  We would like to have the ability to include a token in a mailing that either makes the envelope heavier or comes in a box, and thus may induce the sample member into opening the mail, reading the message, and engaging with the project through calls to the 800#, setting a web appointment, or responding when the interviewer calls or stops by. Decisions regarding who receives this incentive would be made by the NORC central office, and interviewers would not have discretion over which respondents receive this incentive. Records will be maintained of which respondents received which gifts, to allow for future analysis.

Final Push Incentive

Starting after the first 12 weeks of the round, cases that have had at least 7 contact attempts or at least one refusal will be eligible for a final push incentive of $25, which is an increase of $5 over round 18.  The increased incentive maintains the ratio of our base and final push incentives so that final push value stays half that of the base. In order to facilitate a timely close to the fielding, starting 6 months after the start of fielding, all cases will be eligible for this incentive.  We note that by the time of final push offer, respondents are typically quite challenging and requiring many outreach attempts by telephone, mail or even in person. Even small reductions in the necessary outreach can offset the additional $5 conditional payment.

Enhanced Final Push

In order to support sample representativeness, we request an extension of the above incentive, which we describe as an enhanced final push. The proposed enhanced final push incentive of $50 (instead of $25) would be offered to individuals in subgroups whose completion rate was significantly lagging the sample overall at a given point in time. Payment would occur upon interview completion. Individuals not having completed an interview in the last five rounds will not be eligible for the enhanced final push.

Subgroups are defined by the following measures in the most recent completed interview going back to Round 12: gender, race/ethnicity, score on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (a measure of cognitive skill), weeks worked in the prior calendar year, educational attainment, household income in the prior calendar year, residence in a metropolitan area, and presence of biological children in the household, and each of these with gender and race/ethnicity. The subgroup definitions are based on variables that describe or affect labor market activity, the central topic of the NLSY97.

We anticipate offering this incentive to roughly 1,000 respondents, as this is the number of respondents who fell into these subgroups after six months of data collection in Round 18. As with all other incentives, the decision of which respondents received the incentive would be made by the central office and not individual interviewers. All respondents in the lagging subgroups would be offered the enhanced amount unless ineligible (for example, those in Group 4).

We base this incentive on early results of an enhanced final push experiment in Round 28 of the NLSY79. Preliminary R28 evidence as of August 19, 2019 (below) indicates that lower-performing subgroups that are being offered the enhanced final push incentive are completing at the same rate as higher-performing subgroups that are not being offered the enhanced incentive. This parity in completion rates is in marked contrast to the respective subgroups’ quite different completion rates prior to the offer of the differential incentive. This evidence leads us to conclude that the differential enhanced final push design allows us to improve sample representativeness at the end of the round, especially among least-represented groups. If final analyses in early fall 2019 do not confirm these patterns, we will submit a proposal to OMB via a non-substantive change request proposing not to implement the enhanced final push design for Round 19, or to implement using an experimental design.

Preliminary Results of Round 28 Enhanced Final Push Implementation as of 8/19/19

	At Overall Sample 60 %			During Final Push Period
	N	Complete	% Complete	N	Complete	% Complete
Not Eligible for Enhanced Final Push	7681	4926	64.13%	7681	854	11.12%
Eligible for Enhanced Final Push	1487	581	39.07%	1487	161	10.83%

Incentive Costs

A table listing the total cost of incentives by respondent pool is provided below.

Table 5. Round 19 Incentive Costs by Respondent Pool (based on approximately 6500 expected total completes)

	Group 1	Group 2	Group 3				Group 4
Incentive Type	R18 Completers who completed in R17	R18 Com-pleters who missed R17	Missed R18, completed R17	Missed R18 and R17, Completed R16	Missed R18, R17, R16	Missed R18, R17, R16, R15	Missed all of the prior 5 rounds
Sample size*	6365	361	737	268	210	75	579
Expected completes	91%	62%	39%	27%	31%	21%	11%
Base	$50	$50	$50	$50	$50	$50	$50
Returning Bonus		$30
Missed Round(s)			$40	$60	$80	$100	$150
Total from Base, Returning, and Missed Rounds	$289,608	$17,905	$25,869	$7,960	$8,463	$2,363	$12,738
Total from Above Row	$364,906
Incentive Enhancements
Final Push	$12,500
Enhanced Final Push	$12,500
Token In-Kind	Maximum $20,000
Total	$409,906

* Note: Sample sizes exclude deceased and blocked cases. Expected completes based on completion rates of similar groups in R18.

References

https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/studies-welfare-populations-data-collection-and-research-issues/incentives-panel-studies-0

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0108.xml#obo-9780199756384-0108-bibItem-0079 - search ‘participant incentives’

http://www.goeritz.net/SSCR2.pdf - Lotteries in Longitudinal Surveys

https://www.surveypractice.org/article/3045-an-incentive-experiment-designed-to-increase-response-to-a-between-wave-contact-update-mailing-in-two-panel-studies - PSID between-wave incentive for contact info. Confirms PSID practice of $10 for update.

https://www.surveypractice.org/article/3098-refusal-conversion-incentives-and-participation-in-a-longitudinal-study-of-older-adults - NSHAP finds use of graduated incentives did not affect overall incentive cost in later rounds.

10. Confidentiality of Data

a. BLS Confidentiality Policy

The information that NLSY97 respondents provide is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974 (DOL/BLS – 17 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (67 FR 16818)) and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA). CIPSEA is shown in attachment 3.

The Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA) safeguards the confidentiality of individually identifiable information acquired under a pledge of confidentiality for exclusively statistical purposes by controlling access to, and uses made of, such information.  CIPSEA includes fines and penalties for any knowing and willful disclosure of individually identifiable information by an officer, employee, or agent of the BLS.

 

Based on this law, the BLS provides respondents with the following confidentiality pledge/informed consent statement:

 

“We want to reassure you that your confidentiality is protected by law. In accordance with the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act, the Privacy Act, and other applicable Federal laws, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, its employees and agents, will, to the full extent permitted by law, use the information you provide for statistical purposes only, will hold your responses in confidence, and will not disclose them in identifiable form without your informed consent. All the employees who work on the survey at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its contractors must sign a document agreeing to protect the confidentiality of your information. In fact, only a few people have access to information about your identity because they need that information to carry out their job duties.

Some of your answers will be made available to researchers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other government agencies, universities, and private research organizations through publicly available data files. These publicly available files contain no personal identifiers, such as names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and places of work, and exclude any information about the States, counties, metropolitan areas, and other, more detailed geographic locations in which survey participants live, making it much more difficult to figure out the identities of participants. Some researchers are granted special access to data files that include geographic information, but only after those researchers go through a thorough application process at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those authorized researchers must sign a written agreement making them official agents of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and requiring them to protect the confidentiality of survey participants. Those researchers are never provided with the personal identities of participants. The National Archives and Records Administration and the General Services Administration may receive copies of survey data and materials because those agencies are responsible for storing the Nation’s historical documents.

 BLS policy on the confidential nature of respondent identifiable information (RII) states that “RII acquired or maintained by the BLS for exclusively statistical purposes and under a pledge of confidentiality shall be treated in a manner that ensures the information will be used only for statistical purposes and will be accessible only to authorized individuals with a need-to-know.”

By signing a BLS Agent Agreement, all authorized agents employed by the BLS, the prime contractor and associated subcontractors pledge to comply with the Privacy Act, CIPSEA, other applicable federal laws, and the BLS confidentiality policy. No interviewer or other staff member is allowed to see any case data until the BLS Agent Agreement, BLS Confidentiality Training certification, and Department of Labor Information Systems Security Awareness training certification are on file. Respondents will be provided a copy of the questions and answers shown in attachment 4 about uses of the data, confidentiality, and burden. These questions and answers will appear on the back of the letter that respondents will receive in advance of the Round 19 interviews. Attachment 4 also shows the combination advance letter and locating card for Round 19.

b. Contractor Confidentiality Safeguards

NLS contractors have safeguards to provide for the security of NLS data and the protection of the privacy of individuals in the sampled cohorts. These measures are used for the NLSY97 as well as the other NLS cohorts. Safeguards for the security of data include:

1. Like all federal systems, NLS and its contractors follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines found in special publication 800-53 to ensure that appropriate security requirements and controls are applied to our system. This framework provides guidance, based on existing standards and best practices, for organizations to better understand, manage and reduce cybersecurity risk.

2. Storage of printed survey documents in locked space.

3. Protection of computer files against access by unauthorized individuals and groups. Procedures include using passwords, high-level “handshakes” across the network, data encryption, and fragmentation of data resources. As an example of fragmentation, should someone intercept data files over the network and defeat the encryption of these files, the meaning of the data files cannot be extracted except by referencing certain cross-walk tables that are neither transmitted nor stored on the interviewers’ laptops. Not only are questionnaire response data encrypted, but the entire contents of interviewers’ laptops are now encrypted. Interview data are frequently removed from laptops in the field so that only information that may be needed by the interviewer is retained.

4. Protection of computer files against access by unauthorized persons and groups. Especially sensitive files are secured via a series of passwords to restricted users. Access to files is strictly on a need-to-know basis. Passwords change every 90 days.

Protection of the privacy of individuals is accomplished through the following steps:

1. Oral permission for the interview is obtained from all respondents, after the interviewer ensures that the respondent has been provided with a copy of the appropriate BLS confidentiality information and understands that participation is voluntary.

2. Information identifying respondents is separated from the questionnaire and placed into a nonpublic database. Respondents are then linked to data through identification numbers.

3. After the final interview round, respondent identifier computer files will be destroyed.

4. The public-use version of the data, available on the Internet, masks data that are of sufficient specificity that individuals could theoretically be identified through some set of unique characteristics.

5. Other data files, which include variables on respondents’ State, county, metropolitan statistical area, zip code, and census tract of residence and certain other characteristics, are available only to researchers who undergo a review process established by BLS and sign an agreement with BLS that establishes specific requirements to protect respondent confidentiality. These agreements require that any results or information obtained as a result of research using the NLS data will be published only in summary or statistical form so that individuals who participated in the study cannot be identified. These confidential data are not available on the Internet.

6. Some questions of a more private nature are contained in self-administered portions of the survey for some respondents so their answers are concealed both from the interviewer and anyone in the household who might overhear the interview. Where self-administration will not occur, we have attempted to reframe questions so that individuals overhearing the respondent’s answers only would not be able to infer content.

7. In Round 19, the project team will continue several training and procedural changes that were begun in Round 11 to increase protection of respondent confidentiality. These include an enhanced focus on confidentiality and data security in training materials, clearer instructions in the Field Interviewer Manual on what field interviewers may or may not do when working cases, continued reminders of respondent confidentiality in field communications throughout the field period and formal separation procedures when interviewers complete their project assignments. Also, online and telephone respondent locating activities have been moved from geographically dispersed field managers to locating staff in central offices.

8. Date of birth will be verified at the beginning of the interview; thus, preventing the interviewer from starting the interview with the wrong person and then recognizing the error during the interview when the preloaded data were questioned. This check has been in place since Round 16.

11. Sensitive Questions

Continuing the practice of the last few rounds of the NLSY97, the Round 19 questionnaire includes a variety of items that permit the respondents to provide more qualitative information about themselves. Informal feedback from the interviewers and respondents indicates that this type of subjective data carries greater resonance with respondents as being informative about who they are, rather than the behavioral data that are the mainstay of the NLSY97 questionnaire. The items selected for self-description are all hypothesized in the research literature to be predictive of or correlated with labor market outcomes. There are several broad sets of questions in the NLSY97 data-collection instruments that may be considered sensitive. We address each of these categories separately below.

a.) Sexual Activity

Because puberty and the initiation of sexual activity occurred for many of the sample members during the first few survey rounds, this information has been carefully collected. Results from a number of different surveys, including early rounds of the NLSY97, indicate that a significant proportion of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 report that they are sexually active. It is vital that we continue to trace the progression of sexual activity in relation to the realization of educational and occupational goals and with respect to the promotion of good health practices. Sexual activity and contraceptive use are important indicators of how serious young people are about reaching higher levels of educational and occupational attainment, and there should be significant congruence between anticipated life goals, sexual activity, and its associated outcomes.

The survey will continue to collect information on the number of times male respondents have made a woman pregnant, as well as information on the live births from those pregnancies. Few studies have examined the linkages between early childbearing for men and subsequent education and employment outcomes in relation to family commitments. However, there is now some research indicating a modest connection between male labor supply and how many children they have. In an age where social responsibility is a salient public issue, longitudinal collection of data on the number of children men have fathered is essential to guarantee adequate representation of their children. At a minimum, collection of information about the offspring of male respondents is necessary for linking economic outlays of child support or lack of outlays of child support with potential determinants of both men’s and women’s labor supply behavior. Cross-sectional estimates of childbearing data for men can underestimate the number of children ever born to males.

The interviewer will administer these questions directly, although the questions were primarily asked using the A-CASI technology prior to Round 18. Questions are worded so that respondents may answer without having to speak aloud sensitive terms such as contraception methods, which could be overheard in their immediate environment. No respondent will be pressured to answer the questions, and interviewers will be instructed to accept refusals without attempting to encourage response. Previous experience indicates that respondents usually recognize the importance of these questions, and field interviewers generally have not reported difficulties with these types of questions.

b.) Anti-Social Behavior

The educational and labor force trajectory of individuals is strongly affected by their involvement in delinquent and risk-taking behaviors, criminal activity, and alcohol and drug use. There is widespread interest in collecting data on such behaviors. The challenge, of course, is to obtain accurate information on activities that are socially unacceptable or even illegal. Questions on these activities have been asked in the self-administered portions of the NLSY97 through Round 18, and asked by interviewers directly for 75 percent of interviews conducted by telephone in Round 18. Most of these items will again be asked by interviewers in Round 19 for those interviews conducted by telephone.

Criminal Justice. The longitudinal collection of arrests, convictions, and incarceration permits examination of the effects of these events on employment activity. Through Round 18, the NLSY97 collected criminal activity and permitted the study of whether there is a sustained pattern of criminal activities and how these patterns are related to employment difficulties. Use of both self-reports of behavior and of official disciplinary and court actions allows the NLSY97 to separate the effects of criminal activity that lead to an arrest or other legal action versus criminal activity that remains unpunished.

Beginning in Round 19, we propose to stop asking the questions on criminal activity. Beginning in Round 18 with the move to telephone interviewing these questions were no longer self-administered for the majority of the respondents. When interviewer-administered, past work shows there is substantial under-reporting of criminal activity. (See Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn. (2003) Chapter 3: Comparison of Self-Report and Official Data for Measuring Crime in Measurement Problems in Criminal Justice: Workshop Summary. National Research Council. We will maintain the self-reports on arrests, convictions, and time served.

Experiences with the correctional system. The Round 19 questionnaire continues to ask several questions on incarceration and parole that were added in Round 12. These include finer detail on parole and probation status as well as violations of that status, questions about experiences and services received while incarcerated, and questions about experiences and behaviors since release from incarceration. The questions on experiences and services received while incarcerated will be asked of currently incarcerated respondents and those who were incarcerated and released since the last interview. Respondents who were released from incarceration since the last interview also will be asked about their experiences and behaviors since they were released. For those respondents who are interviewed in person, these questions will continue to appear in the self-administered section, but will be asked by interviewers directly for the interviews conducted by telephone in Round 19.

Substance use. To quote a report based on data from the 1990 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), “Patterns of tobacco, alcohol and other drug use usually are established during youth, often persist into adulthood, contribute substantially to the leading causes of mortality and morbidity, and are associated with lower educational achievement and school dropout.” It is important that the NLSY97 continue to collect this information because of the potential impact of substance use on education and employment outcomes.

c.) Mental health

The literature linking mental health with various outcomes of interest to the NLSY97, including labor force participation, is fairly well-established. The Round 18 questionnaire includes questions on how many times the respondent has been treated for emotional, mental or psychiatric problems and how many times the respondent missed work or activities because of such problems in the past year. In addition, Round 19 will included the 7-item Center for Epidemiological Depression Scale (CESD), a screening instrument for depression, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screener-7 (GAD-7), a screening instrument for anxiety. The mental health scales have been fielded as part of the NLSY79 data collection.

d.) Religion

The NLSY97 has included questions about religious identification and attendance in most rounds. In Round 19, we are also including questions on religious attendance as have been asked in several prior rounds.

e.) Income, Assets, and Program Participation

The questionnaire asks all respondents about their income from wages, salaries, and other income received in the last calendar year. Other income is collected using a detailed list of income sources such as self-employment income, receipt of child support, interest or dividend payments, or income from rental properties. Respondents also are asked about their participation in government programs. Included are specific questions regarding a number of government assistance programs such as Unemployment Compensation, AFDC/TANF/ADC, and food stamps.

In addition to income, respondents are periodically asked about current asset holdings. Questions include the market value of any residence or business, whether the respondent paid property taxes in the previous year, and the amount owed on motor vehicles. Other questions ask about the respondent’s current checking and savings account balances, the value of various assets such as stocks or certificates of deposit, and the amount of any loans of at least $200 that the respondent received in the last calendar year. To reduce respondent burden, the asset questions are not asked of each respondent in every round. These questions have been asked in the first interview after the respondent turns 18, and the first interviews after the respondent’s 20^th, 25^th, 30^th, and 35^th birthdays. Because asset accumulation is slow at these young ages, this periodic collection is sufficient to capture changes in asset holdings. Round 17 (begun in fall 2015) was the first time any respondents were asked to report their assets as of age 35. Collection of assets as of age 35 continues in Round 19.

Given the high fraction of household wealth associated with home ownership, the NLSY97 questionnaire collects home ownership status and (net) equity in the home from respondents each year that they are not scheduled for the full assets module. In Round 14 we added a question on present value of the home. We also ask respondents who owned a house or other dwelling previously and no longer live there about what happened to their house or dwelling. To allow for respondent-interviewer rapport to build before these potentially sensitive items are addressed, the housing value questions were moved from the (first) Household Information section to the Assets section, which occurs late in the interview. This question series also permits the respondent to report the loss of a house due to foreclosure.

The Rounds 1-13 NLSY97 questionnaires collected month-by-month participation status information for several government programs. These questions have been substantially reduced so that monthly data were no longer collected beginning with the Round 14 interview except from respondents who did not complete the Round 13 interview. The relatively low levels of participation reported did not seem to justify the respondent burden imposed by these questions. More detailed questions about receipt of income from government programs are now asked in the Income section with other sources of income.

f.) Financial Health

To get a better understanding of the financial well-being of the respondents, in Round 19 we continue some of the questions we introduced in Round 10 about a respondent’s financial condition. We ask a set of questions to measure the financial distress of the respondents in the past 12 months. In particular, we ask whether respondents have been 60 days late in paying their mortgage or rent, and whether they have been pressured to pay bills by stores, creditors, or bill collectors. In addition, we ask respondents to pick the response that best describes their financial condition from the following list:

1. very comfortable and secure

2. able to make ends meet without much difficulty

3. occasionally have some difficulty making ends meet

4. tough to make ends meet but keeping your head above water

5. in over your head

The goal of these questions is to understand better the financial status of these respondents and how this status affects and is affected by their labor market activities.

Respondents are free to refuse to answer any survey question, including the sensitive questions described above. Our experience has been that participants recognize the importance of these questions and rarely refuse to answer.

12. Estimation of Information Collection Burden

The Round 19 field effort will seek to interview each respondent identified when the sample was selected in 1997. We will attempt to contact approximately 8,800 sample members who are not known to be deceased. BLS expects that interviews with approximately 6,520 of those sample members will be completed. The content of the interview will be similar to the interviews in Round 18, although we have made efforts to streamline the questionnaire and drop some items that may not work well in telephone mode. Based upon interview length in past rounds, we estimate the interview time will average about 70 minutes.

Interview length will vary across respondents. For example, the core of the interview covers schooling and labor market experience. Naturally, respondents vary in the number of jobs they have held, the number of schools they have attended, and their experiences at work and at school. Our aim is to be comprehensive in the data we collect, and this leads to variation in the time required for the respondent to remember and relate the necessary information to the interviewer. For these reasons, the timing estimate is more accurate on average than for each individual case.

The estimated burden in Round 19 includes an allowance for attrition that takes place during the course of longitudinal surveys. To minimize the effects of attrition, we will seek to complete interviews with living respondents from Round 1 regardless of whether the sample member completed an interview in intervening rounds. We anticipate that an increased fraction of completed cases will be respondents who are returning to the survey after missing one or more rounds and therefore will have longer interviews than the typical respondent who has been in the survey every year.

In Round 19, the second round with telephone as the predominant mode of interview, we propose to shorten the questionnaire to bring the interview length down. Average timings increased in Round 18 as the proportion of interviews conducted by telephone rose from 26 to 76 percent.

Household burden will vary with the number of in-scope sample members present, so households with three sample members may require almost four hours, and so forth. Although more than 1,800 households included multiple respondents at the time of the initial interview, by Round 19 most respondents have established their own households, and very few multiple respondent households remain. We are sensitive to the fact that the interviews in households with several sample members theoretically can pose interviewing problems, but that has not been our experience in previous rounds.

During the Round 19 field period, we will conduct validation interviews with no more than 2 percent of respondents to ascertain that the interview took place as the interviewer reported and to assess the quality of the data collected. These cases will be selected purposefully, based on data and assessments by survey management that indicate a field interviewer’s caseload merits further scrutiny. These validation interviews average about four minutes each and will be conducted only for the main fielding. Reasons for validation interview included missing audio on CARI files and High CARI recording refusal rate.

Based on our experience of recording segments of the main interview in Rounds 11 through 13, and use of these segments for data quality assurance in Rounds 14 through 18, respondents will be asked to provide their consent for the recording of segments of the main interview in Round 19.

“My computer is equipped to record this interview for quality control, research, testing and training purposes. As always your confidentiality is protected by Federal law and the policies of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and (Name of Contractor). May I continue with the recording?”

YES

NO

If the respondent objects to the recording of the interview, the interviewer will confirm to the respondent that the interview will not be recorded and then proceed with the interview.

Recording these interviews will enable BLS to improve data quality while reducing respondent burden. These recordings help verify that the interviews actually took place and that the interviewers did not fabricate the data. Recordings also help to ensure that interviewers are reading the questions exactly as worded and entering the responses properly. In addition, they help to identify parts of the interview that might be difficult or causing misunderstanding for interviewers or respondents. Our experiences with OMB-approved interview recordings since Round 10 indicate that respondents are generally quite willing to consent to be recorded, and the quality of recordings is sufficient for meaningful data-quality assurance.

In addition, we employ statistical review of questionnaire data to investigate interviewer performance when recordings are not available (such as in the case of a recording refusal or microphone issues). Statistical review includes, but is not limited to, looking at cases with unusual lengths of interview (too short or too long), the percent of recording refusal, industry and occupation verbatim response quality, response outliers, frequency of comments made by field interviewers in questionnaire, etc. When statistical anomalies are identified in interviewer performance, these interviewers’ cases are then subjected to additional recording or data review.

These two methods of data quality review are conducted by project staff and reduce respondent burden as verification of the interview and its quality can be done without further outreach to the respondent. This methodology also reduces cost as statistical review can be done on an interviewer-level basis to evaluate the particular field interviewer’s data quality.

Table 7: No. of Respondents and Average Response Time, NLSY97 Round 19

Form	Total Respondents	Frequency	Total Responses	Average Time per Response	Estimated Total Burden
Main NLSY97: September 2019-May 2020	6,520	One-time	6,520	70 minutes	7,606.7 hours
Validation interview: October 2019 – June 2020	130	One-time	130	4 minutes	8.7 hours
TOTALS*	6,520	—	6,650	—	7,616 hours

* The difference between the total number of respondents and the total number of responses reflects the fact that about 6,520 are expected to complete the main interview. In addition, about 130 respondents will be interviewed twice, once in the main survey and a second time in the 4-minute validation interview.

The total response burden for the survey is 7,616 hours. The total annualized cost to respondents, based on burden hours and the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, is $55,216.00.

If the average survey time were to run longer than 70 minutes after 1,000 interviews, the program will request permission through a non-substantive change to delete survey items to bring the survey length in line with approved respondent burden.  Items for deletion would be selected based on long timing or a high number of respondent comments.

13. Cost Burden to Respondents or Record Keepers

Respondents for this survey will not incur any capital and start-up costs; respondents will not incur any operation and maintenance or purchase of service costs.

14. Estimate of Cost to the Federal Government

The total estimated cost for the main NLSY97 in Round 19 is $12 million.  This cost includes survey management, questionnaire design, instrument development, pretest and main data collection including incentive payments, cleaning and preparation of data files for users, and services to users of the data files.

15. Change in Respondent Burden

In this round, the NLSY97 will continue to use telephone as the primary mode of interviews. We have made efforts to reduce the length of the interview in order to keep respondents engaged during the phone interview. In addition, we have dropped the pretest from Round 18. The burden for Round 19 is approximately 1,000 hours lowers than the burden from Round 18. A substantial portion of the reduction comes from a lower expected response rate. Our experience in Round 18 demonstrated that it is more difficult to secure cooperation for a telephone versus face-to-face interview for this age group. We are projecting 460 fewer interviews for Round 19 than we did for Round 18.

16. Plans and Time Schedule for Information Collection, Tabulation, and Publication

The following is the planned schedule for the data collection for Round 18.

Questionnaire Development December 2017 – September 2018

Respondent Materials Development January 2019 – June 2019

Main Data Collection September 2019 – June 2020

Data Processing July 2019 – November 2020

Publication of BLS News Release June 2022
Release of Public-Use Main Data Files September 2021

17. Request Not to Display OMB Expiration Date

The OMB number and expiration date will be provided in the advance letter.

18. Exceptions to “Certificate for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions”

We do not have any exceptions to the “Certificate for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions” statement.

1 For example, refer to the results of the “Thank You” experiment that was conducted in Rounds 12-14. We discuss these results below in our discussion of the R18 Returner Incentive.

2 In Round 18, total respondent fees were $409,061 for 6,734 completes, or an average of $60.75/complete. We are proposing $412,906 in incentives to achieve 6,520 responses, or an average of $63.50/complete.

3 If the individual responds in Round 17, they receive $60 in Round 17, $40 in Round 18, and $50 in Round 19 for a total of $150. If the individual does not respond in Round 17, they receive $60 in Round 18 and $80 in Round 19 for a total of $140.