Business Sample Revision, Round 3 Testing Plan

This is an update to a request that was approved by OMB under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0725) on January 6, 2011 and a request for additional burden hours.

Our original request was for 60 burden hours. After conducting two of three rounds of interviews, we have found the need to make additional revisions and conduct extra interviews to ensure we feel comfortable with the proposed changes. We have conducted 39 interviews thus far and therefore have 21 remaining from our original request. We would like to request approval to conduct an additional 15 interviews, for a maximum of 36 interviews in the third round of testing. The third round of testing will be conducted in July and August.

The interviews will be conducted for the 2012 Business Sample Revision (BSR-12) and involve the following survey programs: Annual Retail Trade Survey (ARTS), Annual Wholesale Trade Survey (AWTS), Services Annual Survey (SAS), Monthly Advance Retail Trade Survey (MARTS), Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS), Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS), and the Quarterly Services Survey (QSS).

Interviews will take place at the company’s site. The cognitive interviewing will especially focus on the following topics:

• Respondents’ ability to follow skip instructions,

• Respondents’ ability to correctly identify and report the address, Employer Identification Number, and date in the organizational change question,

• SAS and QSS respondents’ ability to accurately report the number of establishments on the questionnaire,

• Respondents’ comprehension of the term “e-commerce,” as defined for each survey program, and

• Reactions to question order and potential detrimental question order effects.

Subject area specialists from the Census Bureau will accompany the researcher on most, if not all, of the interviews. They will assist with respondent debriefing, especially in cases where additional clarification of the subject matter is required.

We will record the interviews with the participants’ permission, to aid researchers in accurately reporting findings and recommendations. Before beginning the interviews, we will inform participants that their response is voluntary. We also will inform the participants that the information they provide is confidential. We will not be providing monetary incentives to participants in this study.

We estimate that it will be necessary to interview only one participant at each business. We estimate the length of the interviews will average 1 hour. Therefore, the maximum estimated burden for this submission is 15 hours.

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

Kristin J. Stettler

Response Improvement Research Staff

7K132A

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-7596

Kristin.j.stettler@census.gov