OMB Memo

Respondent Privacy and Confidentiality Concerns Survey

Submitted Under Generic Clearance for Census Bureau Field Tests and Evaluations

Request: The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for Field Tests (OMB #0607-0971). We will be administering an online survey designed to measure respondent privacy and confidentiality concerns for the 2020 Census using a questionnaire refined by two rounds of cognitive interviews previously conducted under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting (OMB #0607-0725) and two rounds of additional online pretesting (including a proof of concept test) under the generic clearance for internet nonprobability panel pretesting (OMB #0607-0978).

Purpose: The purpose of conducting this survey is to measure individuals’ privacy risk tolerance with the goal of informing the privacy loss budgets allowed in mathematical privacy models for decennial data releases. Responses to the questionnaire items provide information about respondent concerns surrounding each of the different pieces of individual and household-level information collected on the 2020 Census and included in statistical summaries released by the Census Bureau. To achieve its research objectives, the survey will need to be administered to a large number of respondents drawn from a nationally-representative sample of households.

The full questionnaire is attached (see Attachment I: Respondent Privacy and Confidentiality Concerns Questionnaire). As in the cognitive testing, we intend to administer an abbreviated decennial census questionnaire to respondents, followed by a series of privacy risk perception questions developed by our research team. The privacy risk questions focus on the specific types of data collected in the decennial questionnaire, as well as types of data not collected in decennial to provide a baseline. To our knowledge, there is no other source of information about respondent privacy concerns for decennial items that has been collected from a large, nationally-representative sample of households.

The information collected in this large, nationally-representative survey will be used by experts within the Census Bureau to help make policy decisions about the differential privacy protections associated with 2020 Census data releases. The results may be reported in Census Bureau working papers or in peer-reviewed journal articles.

Population of Interest: Residents of the United States and its territories.

Timeline: We intend to conduct this survey with a contractor-furnished sample drawn from an online panel. The survey will be made available via email invitation in June and data collection will conclude no later than July, 2020.

Sample: In June 2020, the contractor (Ipsos) will draw a sample from an existing online panel (KnowledgePanel) reflecting the national distribution of gender, age, race, Hispanic, home ownership, education and income according to Census Bureau benchmarks. Participants will be randomly selected from U.S. households with known, non-zero probability of selection from an address-based sample and then contacted with an invitation to complete the survey.

KnowledgePanel is unique in that the panel is recruited via postal mailing utilizing the United States Postal Service Computerized Delivery Sequence File. All US residential non-institutional addresses are eligible for selection. Because of this recruitment approach, and random probabilistic sampling methods, resulting survey data are useful for estimates of prevalence of a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors. To enable non-internet households to respond to online survey requests, Ipsos provides non-internet households a tablet with a mobile data plan to complete surveys.

The cohort will include those who did not have online access prior to joining the existing online panel. The sample will reflect the national distribution of gender, age, race, Hispanic, home ownership, education and income according to Census Bureau benchmarks within 5 percentage points of each category (e.g., using a gender distribution of male/female 48/52, the study must have a distribution of 43-53% male and 47-57% female). Our goal is to collect 10,000 valid responses.

Recruitment: Panel respondents will receive an email invitation as well as a notification of the survey on the panel member portal. After the initial invitation, 2 email reminders will be sent on day 3 and 7 of the field period. Additional ad-hoc reminders may be sent to nonrespondents as needed during field period to bolster response.

Survey Administration: The questionnaire will be administered online only using the survey platform Qualtrics. Respondents will receive an invitation from the contractor with a link to the survey which will then take them to the Qualtrics instrument. As previously described, non-internet households who are selected for the sample are provided a tablet with a mobile data plan in order to enable them to respond to online survey requests.

Questionnaire: The questionnaire, programmed in the online survey platform Qualtrics, will include a modified decennial census questionnaire in which respondents will be asked to provide information about up to two household members (which will provide context for the privacy risk questions while also gathering basic demographic information about respondents). The decennial questionnaire is followed by a series of privacy risk perception questions developed by our research team (see Attachment I: Respondent Privacy and Confidentiality Concerns Questionnaire). The privacy risk questions focus on the specific types of data collected in the decennial questionnaire, with particular emphasis on how concerned respondents would be if someone was able to find out the decennial census information about themselves or their household. Following the series of concern questions, respondents will be asked to report on their awareness and perceptions of various topics including risks to confidentiality (such as data breaches and reidentification), attitudes about the use of government data, internet behaviors, and privacy-seeking behavior.

Informed Consent: In the survey introductory text, we will inform participants that their response is voluntary and that the information they provide is confidential (protected under Title 13) and will be accessed only by employees involved in the research project.

Language Presented to Respondents:

"By law, the Census Bureau is required to keep your answers confidential (Title 13, United States Code, Section 9). We are conducting this voluntary survey under the authority of Title 13, United States Code, Sections 8(b), 141 and 193. The results of this study will be used to inform future surveys and censuses. This collection has been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This eight-digit OMB approval number, 0607-0971, confirms this approval. We are required to display this number to conduct this survey. We estimate that this survey will take about 12 minutes. Send comments regarding this estimate or any other aspect of this survey, including suggestions for reducing the time it takes to complete this survey to [email protected]. By proceeding with this study, you give your consent to participate in this study.

Your privacy is protected by the Privacy Act. The information provided may be shared with other Census Bureau staff for the work-related purposes identified in this statement. For more information on this collection, see SORN “CENSUS-5, Decennial Census Programs” by visiting our website at www.census.gov and click on “Data Protection and Privacy Policy” at the bottom of the home page.”

Incentive: Respondents to the survey will receive points in accordance with the KnowledgePanel member agreement. For this study, respondents will receive 1000 panel points, equivalent to $1. This is in accordance with the baseline standard incentive for a survey under 15 minutes.

Length of Interview: We estimate that the survey will take an average of 12 minutes for each complete response. We expect 10,000 complete responses for a total of about 2,000 hours. Data collection will be ended as soon as possible after 10,000 useable responses are collected. We will send up to 14,000 emails to obtain the desired 10,000 completed responses. This would result in a maximum of 14,000 sampled individuals each spending up to 3 minutes reading emails for a total maximum burden of 700 hours. The total estimated burden of this research is 2,700 hours.

Table 1. Total Estimated Burden

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Reading email invitations	14,000	3 minutes	700 hours
Survey	10,000	12 minutes	2,000 hours
Totals			2,700 hours

The following documents are included as attachments:

Attachment I: Respondent Privacy and Confidentiality Concerns Questionnaire

The contact person for questions regarding data collection and the design of this research is listed below:

Casey Eggleston

Center for Survey Measurement

U.S. Census Bureau

Room 5K020F

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-6144

[email protected]

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