Major Collection Changes

Attachment B

Major Collection Changes:

2022 CFS

No Precanvass (CFS Advance)

In 2017, a Precanvass, also referred to as CFS Advance Questionnaire (OMB Control Number 0607-0921), was done on selected NAICS codes with three main goals:

1. Identify non-shipping establishments so that they can be removed from the main survey frame.

2. Obtain a rough measure of an establishment’s annual value of shipments. This is especially important for auxiliaries where prior Census data are not particularly helpful.

3. Obtain contact information.

For the 2022 CFS, all Precanvass establishments will be included in the main survey so data quality will not be impacted. This will have a minimal impact on cost to complete the CFS and allows for staff to devote more time towards preparing the 2022 CFS materials. The CFS sample size will increase to be approximately 160,000 as a result.

Electronic Collection Instrument

The 2022 CFS will no longer have a paper questionnaire option and responses will all be collected electronically. The Economic Census, along with many other economic surveys, already require all electronic reporting. This change allows the CFS program to leverage enterprise-wide systems of respondent communication, mailout, and data collection. This change will potentially improve data quality because validations can be incorporated into the electronic instrument to correct major issues during collection and removing paper forms will eliminate issues that may arise due to scanning or keying errors. Additionally, all respondent commodity descriptions will be captured from electronic reporting compared to 2017 where no paper response commodity description were captured due to keying costs. The instrument guide manual, historically provided as a separate document, will now be built into the collection instrument as tool tips and help screens, allowing respondents to get additional information pertinent to the section they’re on. Finally, eliminating paper responses will result in a cost savings for the 2022 CFS compared to 2017 by eliminating costs associated with scanning and keying paper forms and will reduce the cost of printing and mailing.

Expanded Hazardous Materials Supplement

At the request of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and in coordination with BTS, supplemental survey questions will be asked of 2022 CFS respondents who reported shipping hazardous materials at any time during 2021 or 2022. The supplemental questions will collect data about the packaging types used to transport hazardous materials throughout the country. These questions will only be asked during first and fourth quarter 2022 CFS interviews.

Consolidated Reporting

As needed, the Census Bureau will work with respondents to provide the ability for consolidated reporting, which allows one respondent to complete the survey for multiple establishments within the same company. This reduces burden by only requiring one log in and reduces the need to provide duplicate information for each establishment. This feature was implemented based on respondent feedback from 2017 CFS.

2022 CFS Questionnaire

Electronic Collection Instrument

New consolidated reporter option that allows companies to report all of their sampled locations in one questionnaire response.

Item A: Contact and Mailing Information

This section was previous Item I in the 2017 CFS and has been added to Item A for the 2022 CFS.

Item A: Shipping Location Information

The respondent will have the option to choose either the shipping address or enter a new mailing address.

We have added a field for the attention line in the mailing address.

Item B: 2021 Total Annual Value of Shipments

Respondents are asked to provide the total annual value of shipments in 2021 that originated from the referenced shipping location. This value should exclude freight charges and excise taxes.

Item C: Operating Status

No changes from previous cycle.

Item D2: Total Number and Value of Outbound Shipments

The respondent will enter the value in dollar amount.

ITEM E: Hazardous Materials (Hazmat) Shipments Screener

During the 2022 CFS interview, respondents will be asked if they shipped hazardous materials at any time in 2021 or 2022, during the first and fourth quarters, respectively. Respondents who shipped hazardous materials will be in sample for the Hazmat Supplemental.

Item F: Shipment Characteristics

For the 2022 CFS, depending on NAICS, a sample size of the shipments to report is provided or the respondent will provide a data dump for all their shipments in a given reporting period.

In 2017, the maximum number of outbound shipments to report was 80 shipments.

No collection of SCTG code – this is being generated from Machine Learning (ML) on the product description.

Item G: Shipment Validation

The previous item G for Verification of Primary Industry Activity from 2017 was removed. For the 2022 CFS, Item G has been changed to show collection instrument validations, which include error messages for missing or invalid shipment characters provided, as well as product code validations.

Item H: New this survey year is the CFS Hazmat Supplemental data collection on types of shipping containers for goods that are hazardous materials.

ITEM H1: Hazardous Materials Supplemental Introduction

This screen introduces the content of the Hazardous Materials Supplemental to respondents.

ITEM H2: Hazardous Materials Listing

The respondent will create a list of up to ten hazardous materials most frequently shipped from their location, during the reference year. Respondents may provide a UN or NA number, or a text description, and use the search function to retrieve a list of results from the Hazardous Materials Table to populate this listing.

ITEM H3: Most Frequently Shipped Hazmat

The respondent will rank the first, second and third most frequently shipped hazardous materials from the hazardous materials listing, in Item H3a, H3b, and H3c, respectively.

ITEM H4: Total Unique Hazmat Shipped

The respondent will list the total number of hazardous materials with unique UN or NA numbers that were shipped from their location, during the reference year.

ITEM H5: Outer Packaging Type

For each of the most frequently shipped hazardous materials, as reported in Item H3, the respondent will select the outer packaging most frequently used to ship that hazardous material.

ITEM H6: Performance-Oriented Packaging

For each of the most frequently shipped hazardous materials, as reported in Item H3, where the most frequently used outer packaging in Item H5 is reported as a drum, wooden barrel, jerrican, box, bag, composite packaging or an Intermediate Bulk Container, the respondent will report the following: 6a) the average net weight per packaging shipped, 6b) the total number of packaging containing the hazardous material shipped, 6c) the primary mode of transportation used to ship the hazardous material, and 6d) a UN packaging code from the most frequently used packaging.

ITEM H6: Specification Packaging

For each of the most frequently shipped hazardous materials, as reported in Item H3, where the most frequently used outer packaging in Item H5 is reported as a cylinder, cargo tank, portable tank, tank car, or ‘other packaging’, the respondent will report the following: 6a) a specification marking from the most frequently used packaging, 6b) the average net weight per shipment, 6c) the total amount of the hazardous material shipped during the reference year, and 6d) the primary mode of transportation used to ship the hazardous material.

ITEM H7: Packaging Type and Material

For each of the most frequently shipped hazardous materials, as reported in Item H3, where the respondent is unable to provide a UN packaging code, in the Performance-Oriented Packaging Item 6d, the respondent will select the packaging type and material of the most frequently used packaging reported in Item H5.

Item I – Time to Complete Survey

This question was added to the 2017 as item H but have been shifted to become Item I in the 2022 CFS.

General Changes

We are allowing the consolidated reporters to include or use their LOCATION_ID, which is their internal reference to the shipping location rather than using the CFS sample ID in the questionnaire. The purpose of this change was to facilitate respondents consolidating their shipment reporting into a single file while still providing the location that the shipment originated from. Through research we discovered that companies which will benefit from consolidated reporting typically keep their shipment records in this fashion – they will include information in the record about which location a shipment originated from and reference an internal location identifier.