Pretest of the Annual Survey of Refugees

ATTACHMENT E

ASR Pretest Stakeholder

Focus Group Interview Guide

Hello my name is _______________________, and this is my colleague______________. We work at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization based in Washington, D.C.

We would like to talk to you to better understand how refugees are doing in the U.S. We’re currently working on a contract for a group of partners from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation; and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to improve the Annual Survey of Refugees. This survey collects information every year on a national sample of refugees arriving in the five previous years.

Today, we’d like to talk to you for the next hour about your perspective on the refugee experience and critical issues for us to keep in mind as we think about how to improve the Annual Survey. We have revised the old questionnaire and it is being pretested over this fall, and we will be developing recommendations for HHS and ORR based on what we learn in the pretest and through conversations with stakeholders like you.

At the end of the project, we will provide a report to HHS and ORR that provides our recommendations. This report will not be published or shared publicly. In future work that we develop on refugee issues, we will make sure to maintain the security and privacy of what you share with us today.

Before we start, I want to share with you of a couple of important things:

• Your participation in this focus group is voluntary. You only have to answer questions you want to, and you can choose to leave the room or not to be in the study at any time. Deciding not to participate won’t impact you or your organization negatively in any way.

• We’ll be taking notes during the focus group to capture what you say as accurately as possible. These notes will be private to protect your privacy and accessible only by our research staff.

• Everyone working on the research team has signed a pledge agreeing to maintain privacy of all data collected from individuals for this project.

• We will not quote you by name; we will be combining information from everyone we interview and reporting thematic findings so that individual answers cannot be identified.

• If at some point, we want to use a specific quote from an interview, we will contact you directly to obtain consent.

• It is important that what all of us say today stays in this room. As we just discussed, we promise not to share who-said-what and we ask that you do the same. However, as you know, none of us can control what other people will do, so please keep that in mind when you are talking today.

• What we discuss today will inform our ongoing research on refugee resettlement and integration

• Finally, a federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number for this information collection is 0970-0355 and the expiration date is 03/31/2018.

We hope you will see this as an opportunity to share your opinions and insights about refugee integration and self-sufficiency.

Do you have any questions?

Do you consent to participate?

Okay, let’s get started.

INTRODUCTION

• Can you tell us about your organization and what kinds of refugees are served/employed there?

• What is your role at your organization?

  • How long have you been involved in refugee issues?

REACHING REFUGEES

• How do you communicate with and stay in touch with your refugee clients/employee/parents?

• What are the challenges to maintaining contact with them over time?

• What are some successful strategies for communicating with them?

• Are there cultural or demographic sensitivities we should be aware of in different refugee groups?

• How has the recent policy climate affected refugees that you serve or the broader refugee community?

• Have recent policy developments changed how you approach outreach or service to the refugee community?

UNDERSTANDING REFUGEE SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND INTEGRATION

• How do you define self-sufficiency? What are the components that make up being self-sufficient?

• As compared with self-sufficiency, how do you define integration? What are the key components of successful integration?

• How do the refugees that you interact with fare in their progress toward self-sufficiency and integration?

• What are the biggest challenges or barriers to refugees’ progress toward self-sufficiency and integration?

• What are the greatest facilitators or factors that enhance their progress toward self-sufficiency and integration?

• How do refugees’ experiences in their home countries and in first countries of asylum impact their integration in the U.S.?

• Let’s talk about individual versus family integration. How do households that include children (school age and young adults) differ from households with only adults or single people? What are the greatest challenges for children in refugee families? Do children in refugee families influence their parents’ integration?

• How does the local community context and receiving community response influence their prospects for integration?

• How long does it take for refugees to become self-sufficient or reach integration?

ASR REDESIGN

• How can the ASR help your organization achieve its goals? Are there critical topics that you think the ASR should include?

• How do you think resettlement service providers should be involved in the ASR, if at all?

  • Possibilities for integrating ASR into Reception & Placement onboarding or ORR-provided services?

• Which stakeholders do you think should provide input on future ASR content?

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