Business Climate Survey Plan

The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional survey work under the generic clearance for Data User Evaluation Surveys (OMB number 0607-0760).

The Census Bureau=s Economic Planning and Coordination Division is planning a survey to determine business perceptions and attitudes toward Census Bureau forms and government forms in general, and to determine the communication vehicles they are most open to. The feedback from this survey will help the Census Bureau decide how best to promote business participation in the 2012 Economic Census, and will complement and inform subsequent qualitative research in determining the best messaging.

In January 2011, our contractor WB&A will initiate emails to qualifying participants in the e-Rewards research panel, inviting them to participate in our web-based, invitation-only survey. WB&A will partner with Research Now to provide the sample from their business panel. (Refer to the Methodology document for further information about WB&A and Research Now.) The survey will remain open until 1,000 qualifying responses have been received (subject to quotas by industry sector).

While responses will be controlled to be proportional across industry sectors, we regard this as a convenience sample given the population from which the e-Rewards panel is drawn. We will not attempt to generalize from this survey to the entire population of businesses, but will use the data as we would results from qualitative research such as focus groups or expert interviews.

Economic Planning and Coordination Division staff and our contractor have reviewed and internally tested the questionnaire for ease of use and content appropriateness. We estimate respondent burden at 15 minutes per questionnaire for a total respondent burden of 250 hours.

The total cost to the Census Bureau to conduct this evaluation under the contract is $40,000.

For further information about this study, please contact Paul Zeisset at 301-763-4151 or paul.t.zeisset@census.gov.