Appendix 2

Appendix 2 – Cognitive Testing Materials

Materials include:

Recruitment Ad

Screener

Invitation Email

Reminder Email

Consent Form

Cognitive Interviewing Protocol

Recruitment Ad

• Start Date/Time: DATE, 9:00AM

• End Date/Time: DATE, 5:00PM

• Headline: Recruiting Adults to Test Survey Questions – Receive $75

• URL: SCREENER LINK

• Body:

Westat is recruiting adults aged 18 or above to test survey questions for a national household travel survey. Individuals will be asked to provide their opinions and feedback selected survey items. Interviews will last no more than 90 minutes and take place in November through Zoom. At the end of the session individuals will receive a $75 electronic Amazon gift card. Westat employees are not eligible, but their friends and family are encouraged to participate.

If you are interested in participating, please go to [URL]. You will be asked for your name and contact information. Someone from Westat will contact you if you are eligible. Please understand that we may not be able to interview everyone who contacts us.

Recruitment Screener

Paperwork Reduction Act Burden Statement

A federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, nor shall a person be subject to a penalty for failure to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number. The OMB Control Number for this information collection is 2125-0545. Public reporting for this collection of information is estimated to be approximately 20 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering, and maintaining the data needed, completing, and reviewing the collection of information.

All responses to this collection of information are voluntary. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: Information Collection Clearance Officer, Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1200 New Jersey Ave SE, Washington, D.C. 20590.

INTRODUCTION SCREEN. Thank you for your interest in an upcoming study that Westat is conducting. We are interested in gathering opinions and feedback on survey items to make sure they are easy for people to understand and to answer. If you are interested and eligible, we will invite you to participate in a virtual interview, which will take no more than 90 minutes. After the interview, we will send you a link to a $75 Amazon electronic gift card to thank you for your participation.

To see if you are eligible for the study, please click on the continue button below.

1. How old are you?

_____ [ENTRY FIELD]

IF PARTICIPANT IS UNDER 18 THEN GO TO INELIGIBLE STATEMENT

INELIGIBLE STATEMENT.

Thank you very much for your interest and your time, but you are not eligible for this study. You may now close your browser.

2. Are you male or female?

• Male

• Female

3. Are you of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?

• Yes

• No

4. What is your race?  Please select one or more. 

• White

• Black or African American

• Asian

• Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

• American Indian or Alaska Native

5. What is the highest level of education you have completed?

• Less than high school

• Completed 12^th grade/high school graduate

• Some college/2-year college/technical school

• College degree

• Graduate or professional school

6. What is your household’s income?

• Under $50,000

• Over $50,000

• Rather not say

7. How familiar are you with the video conferencing platform called Zoom?

• Very familiar

• Somewhat familiar

• A little familiar

• Not at all familiar

8. For this study we are going to ask participants to turn on their video. This will allow us to observe as participants navigate through the survey. If you are selected for this study, would you be willing to turn on your video during the interview?

• Yes

• No

9. Do you use any assistive technology products that help you use a computer such as screen readers or voice recognition software?

• Yes

• No

The 90-minute interview will be scheduled sometime between [DATES] via Zoom and we will provide you with a $75 electronic Amazon gift card to thank you for your time. During the interview, a researcher will observe as you fill out a web survey and will ask for your feedback and opinions.

15. If you are eligible, would you be interested in participating in the interview?

• YES - CONTINUE

• NO - THANK AND END.

Thank you for answering all of the screener questions. We will contact you if you are selected to participate. Please enter your name, phone number, and email so that we can get in touch with you.

Name: ________________________________________________________________

Email: _________________________________________________________________

Phone: ____________________

Invitation Email

Subject line: Details about your upcoming Westat interview

Attachments: [CONSENT FORM/DOCUMENT ON HOW TO USE ZOOM]

Body of the Email:

Thank you for agreeing to participate in a study conducted by Westat. As a reminder we are asking participants to provide their feedback and opinions on survey questions to make sure they are easy to understand and answer.

Your interview will take place on DAY, DATE at TIME. Please be ready at a quiet and private place.

Approximately 5 minutes before your interview time, log onto the Zoom link provided below:

ZOOM LINK

The informed consent document and instructions on how to use Zoom are attached to this email. Although you do not need to sign or return the informed consent document, we do ask you to read it carefully. If you have any questions about the document, we can discuss them at the beginning of the interview.

We will email you a link to a $75 electronic Amazon gift card following the completion of your interview. 

If you have any questions about the interview, please email me at INTERVIEWERS EMAIL or call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX.

Thank you again! I look forward to speaking with you soon.

INTERVIEWERS NAME

Westat

Reminder Email – Day of the Interview

Subject line: Reminder for Today’s Westat Interview

Attachments: [CONSENT FORM/DOCUMENT ON HOW TO USE ZOOM]

Body of the Email:

Your Westat interview is scheduled to begin at TIME today. Please join the meeting using the Zoom link below 5 minutes before your interview. If you have any technical difficulties, you may contact me at [INTERVIEWER’S PHONE NUMBER].

[ZOOM LINK]

Thanks,

[INTERVIEWERS NAME]

Westat

Consent Form

Westat, a private research firm, is going to conduct a national household travel survey. Westat is conducting this cognitive interview in order to get individuals’ opinions and feedback on survey items to make sure these questions are easy for people to understand and to answer. This will help us improve these questions for future respondents.

Your participation is completely voluntary. You may stop at any time, and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer. There is no penalty for skipping any questions.

There are no known benefits for you to take part, but your answers will help us improve survey questions. There are no known risks to participating in the study.

The interview will last no more than 90 minutes and will be conducted over Zoom. During this time we will ask you to turn on your video so we can observe any problems you may experience with answering the survey questions. We will also video record the interview, which will allow us to carefully review the discussion just in case we missed anything while taking notes. In addition, project researchers may observe the interview or watch the recording. At the end of the interview you will receive a $75 electronic Amazon gift card as a token of appreciation.

All information obtained during this study will be treated as secure and will only be used to develop and improve the online survey. We will not share your answers with anyone outside the Westat and Department of Transportation research teams. All information (including the video recording) will be destroyed at the end of the project.

To help keep everything private:

• Your name will not be recorded on the interview notes or reported in any reports.

• Everything that you say will be confidential – that is, no one outside the research team will know your answers.

• The things you say may be put in a written summary of this interview. Your name will not be linked to any of your responses, though we may include quotes that you provide in our reports.

• Information collected during the interview will not be shared with anyone else outside of the research team.

• We will destroy all information that identifies you as soon as we have completed the design of the questionnaire. This will be no later than DATE.

If you have any questions about the study, you can call Ms. Janice Machado, the project director, at (301) 294-2801. If you have questions about your rights as a study participant, you can call the Westat Human Subjects Protections office at 1-888-920-7631. Please leave a message with your first name, the name of the research study that you are calling about (i.e., Cognitive Interview of NextGen Household Travel Survey Questions), and a phone number beginning with the area code. Someone will return your call as soon as possible.

Cognitive Interviewing Protocol

1. Introduction

Hello, my name is INTERVIEWER NAME. I work for Westat, a research company in Rockville, Maryland. Thank you for taking the time to be part of this study.

2. Purpose and Consent Procedure

Let me tell you a little about Westat and what we’re going to do today.

Westat is a research company that conducts research on many different topics, under contract with many different organizations. This particular project is for Department of Transportation. I will be asking you a series of questions to be included in the National Household Travel Survey. The survey provides information about household traveling habits of Americans.

I’ll be asking you to answer some questions and share your reactions to them. The purpose of this session is to find out what you think each question is asking about, and how easy or hard it is to answer. We are not evaluating you. We are looking to improve the questions, so there are no right or wrong answers. All the information you give us will be kept completely confidential, and will be used to improve the survey questions. If there are any questions you don’t want to answer that is perfectly fine - We’re really more interested in how you interpret the questions.

IF PARTICIPANT JOINS BY AUDIO ONLY, ASK THEM TO TURN ON THE CAMERA ON THEIR DEVICE: I would like to be able to see you during the interview to help me know if you are having an issue with any survey question. Would you be willing to turn on your camera?

Informed Consent

We’ve enclosed a consent form in our email exchanges with you. Let me just reiterate what is written on the form. This is a research project and this interview is voluntary. That means you can skip any question and you can stop at any point. All of your answers and everything you say will be kept secure to the extent permitted by law. This means that we will not share your name or information with anyone outside of our research team. The interview will take no more than 90 minutes and you will receive $75 Amazon electronic gift card as a token of appreciation. It will be sent via email after this interview. We would like to record this interview because the recording makes sure we hear everything you say correctly. Only the people who work on this research project will be able to view the recording and see our notes. Your name will not be linked to any of your responses, though we may include quotes that you provide in our reports. The recordings and our notes will be destroyed after we finish the project.

IF OBSERVERS ARE IN ZOOM MEETING: I also want you to know that a couple other people who work on this research project are listening to this interview to take notes as we talk.

Are you willing to take part in this study? Are you willing to have the session recorded?

START RECORDING IN ZOOM. The date and time is ____________. Now that I am recording, I want to ask again, do you agree to be interviewed? Is it okay if I record this interview?

Before we start, do you have any questions?

3. Conducting Cognitive Interview (finalize once questionnaire content is set)

Per Supporting Statement Part A, cognitive testing will focus on new questions.

Q1. Question Wording

Probes:

Q2. Question Wording

Probes:

Etc.

4. General Debriefing

Now that you’ve worked through the questionnaire. Please tell me your overall thoughts about your experience taking this survey.

Were there any questions very difficult for you to answer?

Were there any questions that you didn’t like?

Any suggestions on how to improve the questions?

Those are all the questions I have for you. Is there anything we have not talked about that you would like to tell me? DISCUSS ANY PARTICIPANT COMMENTS

5. Closing

That concludes our interview. I’m going to stop the recording now, and then will confirm your email address so that we can send you the incentive.

STOP RECORDING AND END THE INTERVIEW

CONFIRM INCENTIVE EMAIL ADDRESS

We appreciate your help today. Thank you for your time.

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