American Factfinder Pretesting Update Plan

This is an update to an OMB letter regarding usability testing of the American FactFinder (AFF) conducted under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 1607-0725). The original letter, sent March 5, 2012, requested 18 burden hours for the third round of testing of the new version of the AFF.

Twelve interviews have been conducted to date and changes to the AFF user-interface are being made based on these interviews. The new changes are quite different from earlier versions and the team needs to verify that these changes will work for AFF users. We are writing to request an additional 34 burden hours, including another cycle of the third round testing that utilizes a higher fidelity, almost working prototype.

The currently approved interviews used html low-fidelity wireframes. The testing in this updated submission involves slightly higher fidelity and clickable wireframes in July and again in November and December when the site is more functional. Twelve interviews have been conducted on the initial wireframes; 20 will be conducted on the medium fidelity clickable wireframes and 20 on the higher fidelity site.

All materials submitted in March remain the same aside from some slight tweaks to the tasks. The tasks were tweaked in order to test some of the new designs that were refined since the last letter was submitted. The new set of tasks are enclosed.

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

Erica Olmsted-Hawala

Center for Survey Methods Research

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-4893

Erica.L.Olmsted.Hawala@census.gov