Non-Substantive Change Request (Final set of rotational Questions - Sept 2013)

The U.S. Census Bureau requests permission to make non-substantive changes to the questionnaire under the clearance for the Federal Statistical System Public Opinion Survey (OMB number 0607-0969). The objective of this research is to gather data on public understanding of and trust in Federal Statistical Agencies and federal statistics. These public opinion data will enable the Census Bureau to better understand public perceptions, which will provide guidance for communicating with the public and for future planning of data collection that reflects a good understanding of public perceptions and concerns.

As a reminder, from February 2012 through September 2013, the Census Bureau will add 25 questions nightly onto an ongoing data collection by the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey. Approximately nineteen of the 25 questions are core questions and approximately 6 are available for rotation. Core questions focus on awareness of and attitudes towards federal statistics and federal statistical agencies. Up to 20 times during the data collection, up to 6 questions may be rotated in the survey. OMB and Census have agreed that these rotating questions constitute non-substantive changes to this submission. Attached to this letter is the request to make these changes through a single tracking document. This tracking document contains a complete history of all questions asked and the date that each question was or is planned to be asked.

This is the final set of rotations proposed in the existing Gallup contract. As such, we propose asking a short series of questions exploring different aspects of administrative records use under consideration for the 2020 Census – i.e.,, for housing unit status only vs. for person records; using records for as many households as possible vs. only for nonresponding households; gathering data for nonresponding units from proxies vs. records. We will examine each of these things with a frame of government records for half of the sample and government plus other records for the other half of the sample to see if this makes any difference.

We believe that lessons learned within the context of the Census Bureau questions will also provide strategic information to the other participating agencies planning to use administrative records for statistical purposes. We are requesting to field the new rotating questions from September 3 until 30^th.

The contact person for questions regarding data collection and study design is:

Jennifer Hunter Childs

Center for Survey Measurement

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

202-603-4827

jennifer.hunter.childs@census.gov