2012 Survey of Business Owners Pretesting Plan

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0725). We plan to conduct cognitive interviews to test changes to the 2012 Survey of Business Owners (SBO).  The SBO provides the only comprehensive, regularly collected source of information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and their individual owners by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status. This survey will next be conducted as part of the 2012 Economic Census, which is required by law to be taken every five years.

Most of the questionnaire remains unchanged from the 2007 SBO report form, which was cognitively tested in its entirety. However, some significant changes have been made to the 2007 SBO form as outlined below:

• The screener questions intended to skip businesses owned collectively (e.g., corporations, cooperative businesses, etc.) past the demographic questions have been reformatted. In addition, a clarifying instruction was added to one response option, in order to address problems with nonresponse by nonemployers in the 2007 survey.

• The question intended for veterans of the armed services has been modified based on feedback from a national veterans association.

• A question has been added which is intended to identify businesses operating under franchise.

In addition to these new questions, three alternative versions of the questionnaire will be tested. The first is a “short form” in which most of the owner-specific demographic questions and nearly all the business-oriented questions have been removed, and which will be mailed to half the sample, selected randomly.

The other two are Spanish-language versions of the long and short forms. A Spanish version of the form was requested by many recipients of the 2007 survey, and for the 2012 survey will be made available upon request.

Draft copies of two of the four test versions of the 2012 SBO questionnaire are enclosed. These are the English versions of the long and short survey forms. Although the content is set, there may be slight modifications to the design before cognitive testing begins. The Spanish forms are not yet designed. However, if requested we will send them to you when they have been completed. Aside from the language used in questions and instructions, the Spanish versions will be identical in terms of content and formatting to the English form.

We will test the new forms in their entirety. For each, we will evaluate the question wording and order, response strategies, and respondent burden.  We will also be evaluating respondents’ ability to navigate through the questionnaire, especially with regard to the effectiveness of skip instructions. For the Spanish-language form, we will also evaluate the accuracy of the translation of the questions, and the appropriateness of the translation for various Spanish dialect groups found in the United States. For the short form, aside from evaluating the new survey questions, interviews will look for any potential order effects resulting from the change to the sequence of questions.

From November 2011 through June 2012, we plan to conduct three rounds of in-person, unstructured interviews with a maximum of 75 businesses.  We will ask about half of the respondents to complete the questionnaire prior to the scheduled interview appointment. Respondents asked to complete the form prior to the interview will be selected systematically during recruiting (i.e., every second successfully recruited business).  

The businesses to be selected for interview were in the 2007 SBO sample and will be selected on the basis of reported characteristics of interest. We will focus on the following specific types of businesses to evaluate the changes to the survey form:

• Nonemployers and sole proprietors, including those that indicated incorrectly in the 2007 SBO that they were owned by another company;

• Veterans;

• Business owners who indicated in the 2007 survey that they are of Hispanic origin and/or that they conduct business in Spanish, with emphasis on members of the predominant Hispanic ethnic groups found in the United States (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other predominant groups as identified in the 2007 SBO);

• Business franchise licensees.

These categories of businesses will overlap among those selected for interviews whenever possible. We will also include in our pre-testing sample collectively owned businesses and other types of businesses for which the changes to the ownership screener question are not relevant, to ensure they are not confusing for out-of-scope respondents. Overall, the businesses will vary in size, industry, number of owners, and combinations of gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status of the owners. The companies will be located in the areas of Washington DC; State College, PA; Cortland, NY; Miami, FL; Las Vegas, NV; Oklahoma City OK; San Diego CA; Chicago IL; and San Antonio, TX.

Interviews will be conducted at the business site by staff from the Response Improvement Research Staff (RIRS) in the Economic Directorate of the Census Bureau. A subject area specialist will accompany the interviewers on most or all of the interviews.  They will observe and provide additional clarification of the subject matter if required. The interviews for the Spanish-language form will be conducted jointly by an RIRS researcher and a subject area specialist who is a native Spanish speaker and has experience conducting cognitive interviews with other Spanish-language questionnaires. A copy of the protocol for conducting the interviews is enclosed. Findings from each round of interviewing will be used to recommend modifications to the SBO questionnaire.

After businesses are recruited, participants will receive a follow-up reminder about their appointment.  Participants will be informed that their response is voluntary and the information that they provide is confidential and will be seen only by employees involved in the research project.  We will not be providing monetary incentives to participants in this study.  All interviews will be audio taped with the participants’ permission, to facilitate accurate summarizations.
                        
We estimate the length of the interviews will average 60 minutes.  Half of the cases will complete the questionnaire prior to the scheduled interview appointment; we estimate it will take approximately 15 minutes for respondents to complete it.  Thus, the maximum estimated burden for this research is 84 hours.

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

Alfred D. Tuttle

Response Improvement Research Staff

Office of Economic Planning and Improvement

U.S. Census Bureau
Washington, D.C. 20233
301-763-7809

alfred.d.tuttle@census.gov