Note to Reviewer - R30 Question Reinstatement

September 7, 2022

MEMORANDUM FOR Reviewer of 1220-0109

FROM Keenan Dworak-Fisher

Director, Division of National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS)

Bureau of Labor Statistics

SUBJECT Restoring question re consent to contact institutions

BLS requests OMB approval to add one question to its NLSY79 Round 30 interview. The additional question seeks the respondent’s permission for BLS to contact officials at various institutions to assist in locating and interviewing the respondent in the future. It appeared in the NLSY79 for many rounds up to and including Round 27. In Round 28, as BLS described in Attachment 5 of its clearance package, the interview was streamlined, and the question was slated to be asked only of those respondents who had not previously answered it. However, due to an error, it was omitted from the questionnaire entirely. It did not appear in the Round 28 or Round 29 questionnaire. The question is answered as yes or no and reads:

[Q14-CONSENT-1250] “If you were to enter a residential care facility, a correctional facility, or the Armed Forces, may we contact government or other administrative officials to get their help in locating and interviewing you? When attempting to locate and interview you, we may reveal the fact that you are a participant in this survey. However, as stated earlier, we will never reveal any of the answers you've provided to the survey questions.”

To ensure that we do not miss any opportunities to locate and interview NLSY79 sample members in the future, we would like to put the question back into the questionnaire. As planned in Round 28, we would ask this question only of those respondents who had never previously answered it. As it was intended to be included when the survey length was estimated (and because it would be asked of a small number of respondents), this addition does not affect the respondent burden estimates presented in Supporting Statement Part A of the Round 30 clearance package.