Government Units Survey Split Panel Pilot Plan

The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0725). In February and March of 2011, staff from the Response Improvement Research Staff (RIRS) within the Census Bureau’s Office of Economic Planning and Innovation will be working with the Governments Division to conduct a split-panel pilot study and respondent debriefing for the Government Units Survey (GUS). The GUS collects information on the funding that local governments receive and the services they provide. The survey collects this information for four different types of local government entities: special districts (e.g., airports, libraries, or transit agencies), county governments, townships, and municipalities.

This survey was last conducted in 1987. The Governments Division would like to update the form layout and revise the content of the questionnaire. In November and December of 2010, RIRS conducted two rounds of cognitive testing with approximately 40 different local government entities across New Jersey, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas. (This testing was approved via a separate request under the Census Bureau’s generic clearance, in a letter dated September 22, 2010.) To further refine the GUS questionnaire and evaluate the survey process, the Governments Division will be doing a pilot test in the form of respondent debriefings and post-collection data analysis.

The pilot test is designed to focus on the following topics:

• The effect of section headers within the instrument;

• The applicability of the form for all types of governments, ranging from counties and municipalities to special districts;

• Who completes the questionnaire, and what other people/departments are involved in the response process;

• The quality of the survey frame (as measured by the number of forms that are undeliverable as addressed as well as the number of corrections to the mailing label); and

• The approximate burden for completing the survey.

The pilot study will involve mailing out the GUS to 500 sample cases. The mailout date is scheduled for February 14, 2011. The sample will be a stratified sample, with strata defined by Census division, type of government, and by population (for counties or municipalities) or function code (for special districts). This sample will yield a suitable, broad representation of governments for the pilot test. The pilot test will also employ a split-panel experiment in order to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of section headers within a self-administered questionnaire. Half of the sample cases will receive a questionnaire that contains section headers, while the other half will receive a questionnaire without them.

The pilot test will employ three different methods to evaluate the data that are returned. First, respondents will answer a series of multiple choice and open-ended debriefing questions that will assess how they answered certain GUS questions, who completed the questionnaire, and how long it took to complete the questionnaire. These questions will be included as part of the GUS questionnaire that is mailed to respondents. Second, staff members in the Governments Division will employ analytical techniques to examine response distributions and response patterns to specific survey questions. Finally, the pilot may also involve a small number of follow-up telephone debriefing interviews with approximately 30 respondents for select cases that the Governments Division may want to probe further regarding the response process.

Participants will be informed that the Government Units Survey pilot test is voluntary, as are the telephone debriefing interviews. We will not be providing monetary incentives to participants in this study.

Enclosed is a draft copy of the pilot test survey instrument, which includes the debriefing questions that respondents will answer. Please note that this draft includes section headers; the other treatment will receive the same set of questions, but without section headers. Also enclosed is a copy of the telephone respondent debriefing questions.

For the 30 respondents who will receive follow-up telephone interviews, we estimate the time to complete the questionnaire, the additional debriefing items, and a follow-up phone interview to be one hour. The total estimated burden for these 30 respondents will be 30 hours. For the remaining 470 respondents, who will complete the questionnaire and the additional debriefing items only, we estimate the burden to be 30 minutes. The total estimated burden for these 470 respondents will be 235 hours. Therefore, the total estimated burden for this research is 265 hours.

The contact person for questions regarding data collection and statistical aspects of the design of this research is:

Jennifer Beck

Response Improvement Research Staff

7K033N

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-1736

jennifer.l.beck@census.gov