FMC-R-211123-001_CLEAN_Supporting Statement Emergency revision Crime trucker survey 12.1.21

Department of Transportation

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

Supporting Statement A

Crime Prevention for Truckers

OMB Number 2126-0071

SUMMARY

• This is an emergency review request. FMCSA is requesting emergency revision to a currently approved collection to remove a $25 incentive for individuals participating in the survey.

• The revision includes several de minimis and non-substantive changes to the survey instrument, to change the skip patterns in the survey to make coding them on an online survey platform possible.

INTRODUCTION

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is requesting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) emergency approval for a revision of a currently approved information collection, Crime Prevention for Truckers (OMB Number 2126-0071). If granted, the emergency approval will be valid through the current expiration date of the collection. If a continuation of the survey is necessary past the current expiration date, FMCSA will follow OMB’s normal PRA clearance process for renewal of an existing collection.

1. Explain the circumstances that make the collection of information necessary. Identify any legal or administrative requirements that necessitate the collection.

FMCSA has seen evidence of a pattern of crimes related to harassment and assaults against female and minority male truckers. For example, Security Journal, in a 2006 article entitled “Workplace Violence against Female Long-haul Truckers,” reported that 42 percent of female long-haul truckers reported experiencing one or more types of workplace violence. Further, USA Today, in a 2019 article entitled, “Women are increasingly joining the deadly world of truck driving, confronting sexism and long days,” details barriers that women drivers face. And, USA Today in a 2017 article entitled, “Rigged,” gave accounts of repeated harassment of minority male truckers.

As part of its safety mandate, FMCSA seeks to understand the prevalence, seriousness, and nature of harassment and assaults against truckers. The frequency of assaults occurring, the portion that are unreported, and reasons for possible underreporting are unknown. Any future actions intended to prevent or reduce crimes will benefit from better information of the scope, severity, and nature of the problem. The survey described in this supporting statement is intended to gather information with which FMCSA and other agencies or organizations can better respond to crime affecting truckers, including patterns of criminal activity that may harm female and minority truckers at disproportionate rates.

Originally, the survey was planned to be an in-person data collection, but the project team switched to an online data collection because of the pandemic. Within hours of posting the survey online, it reached its maximum number of responses. This occurred before FMCSA was able to reach out to desired women’s trucking associations to encourage participation by their members, thus frustrating the purpose of the survey.

Changes to the survey itself are to allow coding of improved question skip patterns on the online survey platform (SurveyMonkey). All the changes to the questions are de minimis or non-substantive. The changes do slightly increase the time burden on the respondents, as they will need to respond to more questions instead of having the survey skip ahead. However, this increase is minimal.

2. Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used. Except for a new collection, indicate the actual use the agency has made of the information received from the current collection.

This is a new data collection.

FMCSA has contracted with Battelle to create and execute a study of professional truck drivers to gather this information. This exploratory survey will be the first of its kind, so it will be limited in scale and scope as described in the response to item 12. No more than 1320 respondents’ results will be used. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data by FMCSA and Battelle will help the agency to understand the nature, scope, and severity of crimes affecting truck drivers. The results will not be used for rulemaking.

FMCSA has an interest in the safety of motor carrier personnel, in the free, safe movement of freight throughout the country, and in supporting the departmental goal of equity in transportation. By understanding the nature, scope, and severity of harassment and assaults against truckers (including women and minorities), FMCSA will be better positioned to conduct further research and identify potential responses. The report will be published on the agency’s website for public awareness. The anonymized dataset will be available to other researchers who wish to further analyze the data according to their own pursuits. The report and dataset may be useful to law enforcement personnel, motor carriers, operators of private truck stops, and others in their efforts to improve safety.

3. Describe whether, and to what extent, the collection of information involves the use of automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology.

The information will be collected through an online survey created via the SurveyMonkey service.

4. Describe efforts to identify duplication. Show specifically why any similar information already available cannot be used or modified for use for the purposes described in Item 2 above.

This project included a literature review of existing research on harassment, assault, and other crimes against truck drivers. Anecdotes and dated studies of drivers being harassed or mistreated were available, but the literature review did not find any formal recent research specifically on crimes against female and minority male truckers. As such, extant research is not sufficient to explore questions of equity or contemporary questions of crime impacting truck drivers in general.

5. If the collection of information involves small businesses or other small entities, describe the methods used to minimize burden.

Many of the drivers who participate in the survey will be self-employed owners of their own truck tractor. These drivers can be considered working for small businesses. The questionnaire for this survey has been designed to require less than 20 minutes and can be completed in any time or place.

6. Describe the consequence to Federal program or policy activities if the collection is not conducted or is conducted less frequently, as well as any technical or legal obstacles to reducing burden.

If this collection is not conducted, FMCSA will lack information needed to support the departmental strategic goal of equity.

This request is to collect information from a set of respondents at one time only. There is no follow-up, additional, or supplementary surveys.

7. Explain any special circumstances that would cause an information collection to be conducted in a manner inconsistent with OMB guidelines 5 CFR 1320.6.

There are no special circumstances that would cause this collection to be conducted in a manner inconsistent with OMB guidelines.

8. Provide information on the PRA Federal Register Notice that solicited public comments on the information collection prior to this submission. Summarize the public comments received in response to that notice and describe the actions taken by the agency in response to those comments. Describe the efforts to consult with persons outside the agency to obtain their views on the availability of data, frequency of collection, the clarity of instructions and recordkeeping, disclosure, or reporting format (if any), and on the data elements to be recorded, disclosed, or reported.

A Federal Register notice will be published on [insert publication date] with public inspection scheduled for [insert date]. Since FMCSA is seeking emergency approval, comments are being sought for 7 days.

During the initial PRA process, FMCSA received three generally supportive comments to its 60-day notice from women associated with the trucking industry. One commenter believed that the problem described was so urgent that the agency should take immediate action to address it. No comments explicitly opposed conducting the survey,

9. Explain any decisions to provide payments or gifts to respondents, other than remuneration of contractors or grantees.

Persons responding to the online survey will voluntarily participate and they will not be paid or offered a gift for their participation. Since the survey is entirely online, respondents can quickly take it any time and any place at their convenience.

10. Describe any assurance of confidentiality provided to respondents and the basis for assurance in statute, regulation, or agency policy.

The survey is designed to avoid soliciting personally identifying information (PII) but does involve sensitive topics. As such, volunteer respondents will learn about informed consent at the survey’s landing page and will be informed that the survey is anonymous. The survey does not ask the respondent’s name. It reminds the respondent in more than one place not to use names of companies or other people. If a name is entered, it will be redacted from the public-use dataset and omitted from the report, as will any data specific enough to support identification of companies, persons, or locations.

In accordance with OMB Circular A-130, “Managing Information as a Strategic Resource” and its own best practices, FMCSA will dispose of any inadvertently provided PII.

The information that appears in the public use dataset will not include PII, such as names or employers, that could lead to identification of a particular respondent.

11. Provide additional justification for any questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private.

An important topic of this research is sexual harassment and sexual crimes. The survey will ask about crimes and the surrounding circumstances. None of the questions will ask the respondents to express their own attitudes or behavior regarding sexuality. The survey data collection does not contain additional questions related to matters that are commonly considered sensitive or private.

No PII will be intentionally collected, and no potentially identifying information will be published.

12. Provide estimates of the hour burden of the collection of information.

Battelle will collect data through an online survey. The design calls for a total of 1200 respondents (400 each of female, minority male, and non-minority male) to reach the end of the survey, or a cap of 1320 respondents eligible to participate. The time required to complete the questions will depend on the respondent’s answers.

For estimating burden hours incurred by respondents, FMCSA separates potential respondents into three groups: 1) truck drivers who report no harassment or assault; and 2) truck drivers who do report an incident of harassment or assault. The estimated number of respondents falling into each category, the information collection length and burden are outlined in Table 1.

Any individual who is not a truck driver will be screened out by Question 12. Those individuals are unlikely to attempt the survey because all recruiting and publicity materials will state clearly that the survey is for truck drivers. For this reason, FMCSA assumes the number of ineligible individuals that attempt the survey and the associated burden are negligible.

Table 1. Estimated Number of Respondents Burden Category

Group	Leave the survey by	Expected number	Estimated time per respondent
Ineligible individuals	Question 12	negligible	negligible
Eligible respondents who report no harassment or assault	Question 21	120	8 minutes
Eligible respondents who report harassment or assault	(end)	1200	20 minutes
TOTAL	--	1320	--

Eligible respondents that report no harassment or assault will end the online survey at Question 21. The time to respond to the multiple-choice questions leading to this point is approximately eight minutes. An eligible respondent that does report an incident of harassment or assault will complete the entire survey and incur a burden of approximately 20 minutes.

FMCSA does not know the precise proportion of respondents who will report an incident of harassment or assault. However, the agency expects a sizable majority of eligible individuals will report at least one form of harassment, and it relies on two publications to estimate the proportion. Table 2 contains a rough calculation of a lower bound for the proportion who will report an incident. The table estimates the proportion of females in transportation occupations who would experience a violent crime in a year. Three of the numbers in the table are from a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.¹ The fourth number was calculated using ratios. The numbers from the report are that, when all occupations are counted, all workers experience workplace violence at a rate of 5.1 per 1,000 workers every year. Females experience workplace violence at a rate of only 4.1 per 1,000 per year. The calculation assumes that this ratio (4.1/5.1) holds for transportation occupations. If the assumption holds, then of 1,000 females in transportation, 10.1 would experience a violent crime in a year (12.6 × 4.1/5.1 = 10.1). The category of transportation occupations (other than bus driver or taxicab driver) is broader than truck drivers, and female truck drivers are suspected to be subject to more events than females in office transportation jobs. Also, this report is limited to violent crimes, while the proposed survey questionnaire asks for property crimes, threats, and harassment as well. Therefore, the number of respondents reporting an incident and completing the entire survey should be higher.

Table 2. Average Annual Rate of Workplace Nonfatal Violence per 1,000 Persons Age 16 or Older

Population	All occupations	Transportation occupations (other than bus driver or taxicab driver)
Total	5.1 (SE=0.27)	12.6 (SE=2.15)
Female	4.1 (SE=0.33)	10.1* (SE)

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

* estimated by a proportion from the three other numbers

The second source to estimate the proportion of respondents who will report an incident is an analysis of data from the National Survey of Workplace Health and Safety.² This survey is valuable because it includes both psychological aggression and physical violence. Psychological aggression was characterized by five phrases ranging from “shouted obscenities at you or screamed at you in anger” to “threatened you with a knife, gun, or another weapon.” Physical violence was characterized by four phrases ranging from “pushed you, grabbed you, or slapped you in anger” to “attacked you with a knife, gun, or another weapon.” Although the survey recorded respondents’ occupation, the categories were not sufficiently definitive to identify truck drivers or even transportation workers. In this telephone survey, workers were asked whether they had experienced “never,” “less than once a month,” or in four categories of higher frequency. Of all survey respondents, 41.4 percent reported experiencing psychological aggression at work, and 6.0 percent reported physical violence. Table 3 lists the prevalence of psychological aggression and physical violence for the overall working population and for males, females, whites, and minorities.

Table 3. Prevalence of Aggression and Violence Experienced at Work, All Occupations

Population	Psychological aggression	Physical violence
Overall	41.4	6.0
Male	43.3	5.3
Female	39.4	6.9
White	41.6	5.5
Minority	40.9	7.5

Source: Schat et al.

For the purposes of this information collection request (ICR), FMCSA conservatively assumes that 120 of the 1320 respondents will report no harassment or assault. These respondents will exit online survey at Question 21. Each respondent reporting no incident will incur a burden of approximately 8 minutes, resulting in a burden of 16 hours (120 respondents × (8 minutes ÷ 60 minutes per hour)). The remaining 1200 respondents, assumed to report an incident of harassment or assault, will spend 20 minutes each completing the full online survey, resulting in a burden of 400 hours (1200 respondents × (20 minutes ÷ 60 minutes per hour)). The information collection is expected to result in a total burden of 416 hours as detailed in Table 4.

Table 4. Estimated number of respondents, responses, burden hours, and burden hour costs.

Group	Number of Respondents (a)	Responses per Respondent (b)	Number of Responses (a × b = c)	Average Burden Hours per Response (d)	Total Burden (c × d = e)	Total Burden Hour Cost (e × $31.86)
Report no harassment or assault	120	1	120	0.133	16	$510
Report harassment or assault	1200	1	1200	0.333	400	$12,744
TOTAL	1320	--	1320	--	416	$13,254

To estimate burden hour costs, the agency assumes that the respondent occupation for the information collection corresponds to Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers (Standard Occupational Classification 53-3032). The median hourly wage for Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers is $20.42.³

A loaded hourly wage is obtained by adding the value of hourly fringe benefits to the median hourly wage. The agency estimates a fringe benefits rate of 56 percent of median hourly wage, or $11.44 per hour ($20.42 × 0.56). The 56 percent fringe benefits rate was calculated by dividing the total benefits costs for private industry workers of the transportation and warehousing industry segment ($13.92) by the average hourly value of wages and salaries ($24.71) as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for December 2017.⁴ Adding the dollar value of hourly fringe benefits to the median hourly wage for Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers results in a loaded hourly wage of $31.86 ($20.42 + $11.44).

As detailed in Table 4, the total burden hour cost for this information collection is $13,254. This includes $510 for the 120 respondents that do not report an incident of harassment or assault which are expected to incur a total burden hour cost of (120 respondents × 1 response per respondent × (8 minutes ÷ 60 minutes per hour) × $31.86 per hour); and $12,744 for the 1200 respondents that complete the full survey (1200 respondents × 1 response per respondent × (20 minutes ÷ 60 minutes per hour) × $31.86 per hour).

Totals for this ICR:

Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: 416 hours

Estimated Total Respondents: 1320 respondents

Estimated Total Annual Responses: 1320 responses

Estimated Total Annual Burden Costs: $13,254

13. Provide an estimate for the total annual cost burden to respondents or record keepers resulting from the collection of information.

There are no additional cost burdens beyond those explained in section 12 above.

14. Provide estimates of annualized costs to the Federal government. Also, provide a description of the method used to estimate cost, which should include quantification of hours, operational expenses (such as equipment, overhead, printing, and support staff), and any other expense that would not have been incurred without this collection of information.

The contract for the Crime Prevention for Truckers Study is a Firm Fixed Price Contract totaling $ 336,936 ($95,277 annually), which includes $277,936 in direct labor and consultant costs; $35,000 in travel costs; and $24,000 in other direct costs, including peer review. The research design, protocol development, and implementation of the research methods will be completed in March 2022.

Oversight of the study will be carried out by a General Schedule 14 Program Manager. The labor cost of this activity is estimated to be $73.92 per hour, comprising $48.53 in hourly wages, employee benefits equal to 36.25 percent of wages, and overhead expenses equal to 12 percent of wages and benefits [($48.53 × (1 + 0.36)) × (1 + 0.12)]. FMCSA estimates that oversight tasks require 4 hours each week for the duration of the 3-year contract, totaling 624 hours (4 hours × 52 weeks × 3 years). The estimated Federal staff support is $46,126 ($73.92 × 4 × 52 × 3), or $15,375 annually.

Estimated Total Annual Cost to Federal Government: $110,652.

($95,277 in contractor costs + $15,375 in Federal staff support)

15. Explain the reasons for any program changes or adjustments.

As discussed above, FMCSA is removing the $25 incentive payment; the online survey can be completed at respondents’ convenience. Minimal changes to the survey have been made to support improved implementation of the online platform.

16. For collections of information whose results will be published, outline plans for tabulation and publication. Address any complex analytical techniques that will be used. Provide the time schedule for the entire project, including beginning and ending dates of the collection of information, completion of report, publication dates, and other actions.

FMCSA plans to publish a report to document and analyze the survey’s results. Further, a public-use dataset will be released so that other researchers can analyze the data. The revised survey will be implemented as soon as possible, pending OMB approval of the request. Data collection and final reporting will be completed in Spring of 2022. Following review by the publication office, the report should be available to the public in late 2022.

Many of the questions on the survey can be answered by selecting one or more fixed responses. This type of response can be readily analyzed by quantitative statistical methods. Patterns between types of crimes, locations of incidents, and characteristics of the perpetrators will be observed, and hypotheses will be formulated and tested against the data. The prevalence of different kinds of assaults and harassment will be estimated both as the proportion of respondents indicating any assault or harassment over a 2-year period, and as a crime rate indicating the total number of such incidents per individual per year. The proportion of individuals that choose not to report an incident to authorities will also be estimated.

Measures of central tendency such as means or medians will be reported, as will appropriate indications of variability through confidence intervals. Measures for the women and minority male truckers will be compared statistically to those of the control group non-minority males to establish whether the experiences of women and minority men are unique to their groups or are consistent with the profession at large.

A small number of questions in the survey are open-ended. Respondents will be invited to describe an event of harassment or assault that is not on the pre-determined list. Some responses may be unique, but others may fit measurable patterns. Free responses will be analyzed qualitatively.

17. If seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection, explain the reasons why display would be inappropriate.

The agency is not requesting approval to not display the expiration date.

18. Explain each exception to the topics of the certification statement identified in “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions.”

There are no exceptions.

1 Special Report on Workplace Violence 1993-2009. March 2011. Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wv09.pdf.

2 Schat, A.C.H., M.R. Frone, and E.K. Kelloway, “Prevalence of workplace aggression in the U.S. workforce.” Chapter 4 in B.K. Holoway, J. Barling, and J.J. Hurrell (eds) Handbook of Workplace Violence. Sage: Thousand Oaks, California. 2006.

3 Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2017 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, United States, www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm. Accessed April 11, 2018.

4 Bureau of Labor Statistics. December 2017 Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), Table 10, www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecec_03202018.pdf. Accessed April 11, 2018.