2012 Economic Census Respondent Debriefings Plan

The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire pretesting research (OMB number 0607-0725). We will be conducting respondent debriefings for the 2012 Economic Census. This survey, collected every five years, is the most comprehensive source of information about American businesses. The survey includes inquiries about industry classification, employment data, measures of output, assets, expenditures, inventories, expenses, and other industry-specific inquires.

The main purpose of these respondent debriefings is to identify issues or barriers that respondents faced in meeting survey deadlines, such as problems with gathering requested information, problems with the electronic reporting instrument, etc., as well as respondents’ awareness and perceived utility of online tools intended to reduce burden.

In order to evaluate issues respondents faced, we plan to conduct telephone debriefing interviews with approximately 100 single- and multi-unit companies in various industries that responded to the 2012 Economic Census. Additionally, we plan to conduct telephone debriefing interviews with 25 single- and multi-unit companies in various industries that were nonrespondents to learn about their reasons for choosing not to complete the economic census.

Interviews will be conducted in January and February 2014. Interviews will be conducted by staff from the Response Improvement Research Staff (RIRS) within the Census Bureau’s Office of Economic Planning and Innovation. Subject area specialists from the Customer and Respondent Outreach Branch may participate as observers of the phone interviews as able. Interviews will be not be audio recorded. After businesses are recruited, participants will receive confirmation letters about their appointments upon request via fax.

Participants will be informed that their response is voluntary and that the information they provide is confidential and will be seen only by Census Bureau or special sworn employees involved in the research project. We will not be providing monetary incentives to participants in this study.

We estimate that it will be necessary to interview one respondent at each business. We estimate the length of the interviews at a maximum of fifteen minutes (125 cases X 15 minutes per case = 32 hours). Additionally, to recruit respondents we expect to make up to 5 phone contacts per completed case. The recruiting calls are expected to last on average two minutes per call (5 attempted phone calls per completed case X 125 cases X 2 minutes = 21 hours). Thus, the estimated burden for this project is 53 hours (21 hours for recruiting + 32 hours for interviews).

Enclosed are example copies of an Economic Census form for a manufacturing company and a retail company along with a draft of the interview protocols for respondents and nonrespondents.

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

Amy E. Anderson Riemer

Response Improvement Research Staff

7K130F

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-7544

Amy.E.Anderson.Riemer@census.gov