Response to Public Comment

Response to Comment Received on Proposed Information Collection

Start Small, Save Up Workforce Questionnaire

^{OMB No. 3170-00XX}

In response to a request for comments on this proposed information collection, the following comment was received on October 11, 2020 from Carol Graham:

I think the financial well-being additions are an important contribution to the survey and will provide a fuller picture of why and how people behave financially (such as saving or not), given that perceptions are often as important to behaviors as are objective conditions. However, given my deep experience with subjective well-being surveys and research, I would add a general 0-10 life satisfaction question up front in the well-being part of the questionnaire. This would allow for you to control for innate optimism or pessimism driving responses, as differences in wellbeing across respondents may well explain some of the variance across respondents. In addition, I would also ask an open-ended stress question as well (not linked to finances), such as "did you experience stress frequently yesterday, yes or no", as this would also allow for controlling for more generally perceived stress. These are tried and true questions in a wide range of research, in the Gallup surveys, and in many other well-being surveys

To this comment, the Bureau makes the following response:

We appreciate the comment and the person’s careful review of the survey instrument. We have two reasons for maintaining the survey as submitted instead of incorporating the suggested additions. First, our purpose in collecting the survey information is to assess relationships between financial, rather than general, well-being and stress, so we prefer to keep the survey’s scope focused. Second, if an organization wants to add its own questions that extend the scope of the content, they are free to do so (as long as they obtain the necessary approvals).

We are discussing with CFPB leadership the rationale for issuing this survey to the entire CFPB workforce (including the non-federal workforce) post-pandemic. and, we have federal colleagues also interested in using the instrument.

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