OMB Memo

Generic Information Collection Request: Wireframe Usability Testing of Electronic Instruments to Be Used by Group Quarters Administrators in the 2030 Census

Request: The U.S. Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0725) to inform the development of new electronic instruments intended to be used by administrators of group quarters (GQs) in the 2030 Census. GQs are places where people live or stay in a group living arrangement and which are owned or managed by an entity or organization that provides housing and may also provide services to its residents or clients. GQs include places like student and worker housing, correctional facilities, and skilled nursing facilities. The Group Quarters Operation is a decennial census operation that specializes in enumerating residents of group quarters.

We are seeking approval for usability testing of wireframe mockups of two new instruments. The first instrument (Electronic GQAC Instrument) will enable GQ administrators to provide updated information about their GQs during the Group Quarters Advance Contact (GQAC) operation, such as address and maximum capacity. The second instrument (ISR Dashboard) will allow administrators to coordinate and facilitate access to an Internet Self-Response (ISR) instrument to be used by GQ residents to complete the census questionnaire. The two instruments being tested in this study were developed partly in response to suggestions made by GQ administrators who participated in the 2020 Census. The wireframes will be tested in virtual (Teams) meetings with GQ administrators.

Purpose: Wireframes are non-functioning mockups of user interfaces (UIs) that are developed in advance of programming the systems they represent. The purposes of the wireframe testing are 1) to get feedback from potential users on the current designs for the UIs and the intended functionality of the planned instruments and 2) to identify additional functions or features that may be needed.

Population of Interest: The population of interest consists of administrators of group quarters who coordinated with the Census Bureau during the 2020 Census to enumerate their facilities, and others in similar roles in their organizations. The types of GQs that are in-scope for this study are listed in the Sample section below.

Timeline: Testing will be conducted in November and December 2023.

Language: Testing will be conducted in English only.

Method: The interviews will follow a procedure similar to a usability interview, with the exception that participants will not be able to perform tasks because the wireframes are static images and will not have any functionality. Participants will be asked to review the wireframes one screen at a time and to verbalize their thoughts and reactions as they attempt to make sense of the screen (i.e., a thinkaloud procedure). After reviewing each screen, interviewers will administer additional probes as needed to elicit participants’ reactions and opinions about specific features.

We expect each interview may take up to 90 minutes. The interviews will take place in virtual meetings using the approved virtual meeting software Microsoft Teams and participants will use their own computers. Interviewers will share their screens to present the wireframes to participants. Participants will be asked to join a 5-minute technology check session up to one week prior to the session to verify they can use Teams.

Sample: We plan on conducting interviews with administrators from a maximum of 20 GQ organizations. Participants will be recruited from around the U.S. We will attempt to recruit participants from up to three different organizations from each of the following GQ types:

• Federal Detention Centers,  Federal Prisons, State Prisons

• Nursing Facilities/Skilled-Nursing Facilities 

• Workers’ Group Living Quarters and Job Corps Centers  

• Religious Group Quarters   

• College/University Student Housing

• Military Quarters

We will fill in additional interviews with the following GQ types as needed to complete 20 interviews:

• Local Jails and Other Municipal Confinements Facilities 

• Correctional Residential Facilities 

• Group Homes for Juveniles (non-correctional) 

• Residential Treatment Centers for Juveniles (non-correctional) 

• Correctional Facilities Intended for Juveniles 

• Hospitals, Psychiatric Hospitals, and In-Patient Hospice Facilities 

• Residential Schools for People with Disabilities 

In addition to GQ type, candidates will be selected purposively to obtain variation with regard to size, based on numbers of GQs within the same organization, and geography.

Recruitment: We will select candidates for recruitment using information GQ administrators provided to the Census Bureau during the 2020 Census. We will contact participants by email and ask them to participate in this study. We will send up to a total of two emails to each participant. The text of the emails is included in Enclosure 2. We also have contact information for GQ administrators who, while participating in previous studies, have volunteered to participate in future research. We will contact them by email or telephone and ask if they would be willing to participate in the current study.

Informed Consent: Prospective participants will be informed that their participation is voluntary and that any information they provide during the interview will be confidential and will only be accessible to the researchers conducting the study. Once scheduled, participants will be sent a link via email to an online consent form and asked to review and sign it prior to or at the start of the interview. The consent form is included in Enclosure 1. If they consent to being audio-recorded, they will also be asked to provide oral consent after the recording is started.

Protocol: The wireframe testing interviews will employ a think-aloud protocol. Participants will be asked to review the wireframes one screen at a time and to verbalize their thoughts and reactions as they attempt to make sense of the screen. After reviewing each screen, interviewers will administer additional probes as needed to elicit participants’ reactions and opinions about specific features. After reviewing all screens for each instrument, participants will be asked to comment on the overall process of using the instrument, give their opinions about the workflow and tasks, and suggest any other features or functions that would help them to perform the requested tasks. Participants will also be asked to describe their expected processes for retrieving and reporting the data requested by the systems in order to identify any additional features or functionality that may be needed, and to assess the burden associated with the response tasks. The protocol to be used for this study is included in Enclosure 3.

Instruments: The first instrument, the Electronic GQAC instrument, will be deployed during the Group Quarters Advance Contact operation during which GQ administrators are asked to review the Census Bureau’s list of their organizations’ GQs, update any information that is not correct, and add or remove GQs as needed. The electronic GQAC instrument is intended to provide a more flexible, self-administered, web-based mode in addition to interviewer-administered modes used previously.

The second instrument, the ISR Dashboard, is intended to support the use of the new Internet Self-Response (ISR) option for GQ residents to complete their census forms online. The ISR Dashboard will allow GQ administrators to facilitate the ISR option for their residents by either providing residents’ names and email addresses to the Census Bureau so the latter can send email invitations to complete the census directly to residents, or by providing GQ administrators with login IDs and URLs that the administrators themselves can provide to their residents. In addition, the ISR Dashboard will inform administrators about residents who have responded to the census so that administrators can remind and encourage nonresponding residents to complete their census forms.

The wireframes for the electronic GQAC instrument and the ISR Dashboard are included in Enclosure 4.

Use of Incentive: Incentives will not be provided to participants in this study.

Length of interview: We expect each interview to take up to 90 minutes, including up to five minutes per participant for the technology check. We estimate that we will contact up to 10 administrators for each completed interview, resulting in a total of 200 administrators contacted. We estimate that participants will spend up to five minutes reading invitation and reminder emails. Thus, the total estimated burden for this request is 38.3 hours (see Table 1).

Table 1. Total Estimated Burden

Category of Respondent	No. of Participants	Participation Time	Burden
Reading emails	100	5 minutes	500 minutes or 8.3 hours
Interview	20	90 minutes	1,800 minutes or 30 hours
Total			38.3 hours

Enclosures: The materials to be used in the study are listed below:

• Enclosure 1 – Consent Form and Privacy Notice

• Enclosure 2 – Recruitment Emails

• Enclosure 3 – Protocol for pretesting

• Enclosure 4 – Screenshots of the Electronic GQAC Instrument and the ISR Dashboard

The contact person(s) for questions regarding data collection and statistical aspects of the design of this research is listed below:

Dave Tuttle

Center for Behavioral Science Methods

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-7809

[email protected]

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