Form 1 moderator's guide

Focus Group Moderator’s Guide

Date: ____/____/______ Start time: ___________ AM / PM

Location:

Moderator will ask participants to use their cameraS. (NAME should already be on the Video screen)

We ask that you turn your camera on during the focus group, thank you.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome! Thank you for volunteering to participate today. We know your time is valuable, so we really appreciate that you are taking these 90 minutes of your day to help us.

My name is [MODERATOR NAME] and I will be guiding today's discussion. Besides myself, there are other Census Bureau staff who will hear the conversation including a note taker and observers. Everything you tell us today will be completely confidential.

Today, we will share our plan to allow residents of some types of facilities to complete their census questionnaire online. We want to talk to you about whether our plan for an online census questionnaire would work for the residents of your residential facility and for you as an administrator.

We’ll be recording our session today so that we don’t miss anything important. You signed a consent form for the session ahead of time. We emailed you back a copy of that form. Does anyone have any questions before we get started?

Okay, I’ll start the recording now.

[START RECORDING]

RULES

First, let’s go over a few basic rules.

• I will be asking questions and there are no right or wrong answers. We just want your honest opinions. We don't need to have everyone agree. In fact, if you have a view different from others it is especially important for us to hear it because you may be the only person who is representing a different point of view here today.

• Be respectful of other people’s comments. It is fine to disagree with each other’s comments.

We are interested in listening to everybody's opinion in a respectful manner.

• Only one person speaks at a time, and we’d like everyone to get a turn. Please speak up and let us know what you are thinking. We want to encourage everyone to share their thoughts equally throughout the discussion. I may call on people from time-to-time to help make sure we hear everyone’s thought.

• Due to limited time, I must move the discussion along and may sometimes have to interrupt to do so. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

• Please keep your camera on. It helps the conversation and is more engaging. With cameras on it is easier to tell who wants to speak next or who hasn’t had a chance yet to talk.

• Please keep what everyone says here private. During the group conversation, we use first names only. We keep what you say entirely confidential, and I ask that you do not repeat or share what others say today. Your names will not be used in any reports.

• Don’t identify your residents by name. If you tell us about the experiences that you had with surveys or censuses and a resident, please don’t share their names or any other information that could identify them.

ICEBREAKER

Let's go around the room and have each one of you tell us briefly:

• Your first name or nickname

• The type of residential facility you are an administrator of

• Whether you helped get the residents of your facility counted in the 2020 Census, 3 years ago.

I’ll go first. My name is…

Now I’ll have [NOTETAKER] introduce her/himself.

PROBES

Thanks for telling us a little bit about yourself. Now we are ready to begin. Like I said earlier, for the next census, we are considering a plan to allow residents of some types of facilities to complete their census questionnaire online. The questionnaire would ask them to verify their address and input their names, their date of birth, race, and sex, and the address of any other home they have. We want to hear your thoughts about our plan. We will use the terms facility and group quarters interchangeably to refer to the places where the residents stay.

Does anyone have any questions?

Overall

1. To fill in an online questionnaire the respondent needs access to the internet.

   1. Describe how your residents access the internet.

      1. If needed: Okay, we will circle back to those who don’t have access to the internet at the end of the focus group, for now we’ll focus on those who do have access.

   2. In your opinion, would your residents be able and willing to complete an online census questionnaire for themselves? The questionnaire would have basic questions such as name, date of birth, and race.

      1. Probe if needed: I especially want to hear about what the roadblocks might be to completing an online questionnaire.

      2. Probe if needed: Would you or your staff be able to help those individuals who are not able complete this type of questionnaire.

2. We have been brainstorming how best to give the residents the link and the authentication code for the online questionnaire.

1. One idea we had is to send each resident an email with a link they can tap or click on and then they would have to type in their authentication code. I’m going to share my screen to show you an example email we created so you can see how the link would look and the authentication code.

   1. What do you think of that idea?

   2. (If they don’t think that is a good idea) What do you think would work best?

2. Is email the easiest way to notify them – or would something else work better, like providing them a piece of paper with the information or sending them a text message?

3. Would your residents know how to use a QR code with their phone?

   1. I’ll share my screen to show you what a QR code looks like. This one will take you to Wikipedia.

   2. 

3. Let’s circle back to emails. The Census Bureau doesn’t have emails of any residents.

1. Do you know your residents’ email addresses?

   1. (If Yes) How do you store or keep that information? (For example, using Microsoft Excel or in your contact list)

   2. (If Yes) Tell us about whether you would be willing and able to provide their emails to the Census Bureau?

      1. (If they can’t share emails) Tell me why you can’t share the emails.

      2. (If they know the emails and can share them) We are going to have a secure website for providing the emails to the Census Bureau.

         1. Would you be able to use a spreadsheet to upload the emails?

         2. What are your thoughts about that?

3. (If No) Would you be willing to collect their emails and provide them to the Census Bureau so we could email your residents?

4. Another idea we had is for you to send the emails to your residents. That way you wouldn’t have to give us their emails.

1. What do you think of that idea?

2. If the Census Bureau gave you an example of an email (like I’m showing) with the link to the online questionnaire, would you be able and willing to send it to your residents?

   1. You probably would have to send some reminder emails too. Does that change your answer?

   2. What would you have to do to send emails to your residents?

      1. [If needed:] Would you have to send them individually or do you have some way to send many at once?

3. You would also need to send each resident a 12-digit authentication code to access the census questionnaire. We are considering two ideas: Either each resident would have a unique code or each resident in a building would have the same code.

   1. Talk us through how you would send the emails if everyone in a building had a unique code?

   2. How would you keep track of which code is sent to which person.

5. One thing we are worried about is how to make sure everyone is counted. If some residents don’t respond, we need to get them counted somehow.

1. Do you have any ideas about what might work well to make sure everyone is counted?

2. Would you be willing to work with the Census Bureau to make sure everyone is counted?

   1. That might involve reviewing our list of who has already responded and encouraging the people who haven’t responded to do so.

   2. What are your thoughts about that?

6. For the Census Bureau to tell you who has or has not responded, you’ll need to take a special oath promising not to share any information the census collects. We call this a Special Sworn Status. Once you take this oath, you are sworn for life and will never have to take it again. We are considering whether we can do this virtually, through a video conference with Census Bureau staff, instead of in person.

1. Do you have access to Microsoft Teams or some other video conference platform? Which one?

2. Do you have any concerns about taking the oath virtually and signing a document virtually?

7. [if no internet access] At the beginning of our focus group, I heard that some residents don’t have internet access. Can you tell me more about why they don’t use the internet? What do you think is the best way to make sure they are counted?

Anything else

So, now that you’ve had a chance to think about our plan, what are your thoughts?

Is there anything else that you’d like to mention that you haven’t had a chance to talk about?

Do you have any questions about what we discussed today or is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Thank and End

Thank you for your feedback.

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