Memo

The Census Bureau plans to conduct new research under the Generic Clearance for the Internet Nonprobability Panel Pretesting (OMB number 0607-0978). We plan to conduct a research study using an online questionnaire to better understand whether respondents will allow the Census Bureau to collect their geolocation information from their smartphone. For the next decennial census, geolocation information could help the Census Bureau correctly enumerate people at the correct geographic block.

The primary objective of the proposed study is twofold:

1. Determine whether respondents will allow the Census Bureau to collect their geolocation from their smartphone when they are completing a Census Bureau survey and

2. Calculate the accuracy of the geocodes obtained if the respondent is answering the survey at their home address.

Our secondary objectives are:

1. Determine at what point in the survey (early, later or no difference) we should ask for the geolocation information and

2. Identify whether we should or should not include an explicit question about acquiring the location information in addition to the phones’ own geolocation permissions.

This is a fully crossed 2x2 experiment. The Geography (GEO Non-ID) team will evaluate the accuracy of the geocodes obtained, while the Center for Survey Measurement (CSM) team will evaluate the outcomes of the other objectives.

We will use a sample of 2,000 emails from the Census Bureau’s nonprobability affinity panel. The sample will include emails of people who have previously answered a nonprobability study and have indicated that they own a smartphone as well as a random sample of emails from the panels, who have not yet responded to a study – these individuals might or might not have been contacted about a prior study. We will send up to three survey invitation emails. All sampled emails will receive the initial email. The follow up emails will be sent to those who have not yet clicked on the survey link. In each email, we will encourage respondents to answer on their smartphone/GPS enabled device. The reason for this is that only smartphones or GPS enabled devices have the geolocation technology built into it. Based on the tests conducted thus far with this panel, we expect no more than a 15 percent open rate to the emails and a 10 percent click-through rate to the survey.

Testing will begin in the spring of 2016. The duration of the study will be 2 weeks. The current study will provide no incentive to participate. If respondents click on the survey link in the email, they will be asked a series of opinion and demographic questions, their residential address, and their geolocation question. See the attachments for what the respondents will see, and the order in which they will see the questions.

Staff from the CSM will select the sample and send the emails through GovDelivery. The survey will be hosted on secure servers within the Application Services Division of the Census Bureau that hosts all other secure online production surveys. That means our data are securely stored behind the Census Bureau firewall. The username needed to enter the survey will be the email address where the email was sent (this is the same email used to sign up to participate in Census Bureau research studies). If the respondent starts the survey but does not complete it, that person will not be allowed to re-enter the site later.

We estimate that users will spend 5 minutes on average completing the survey and approximately 2 minutes reading emails. Thus, the total estimated respondent burden for this study is approximately 233 hours, which assumes everyone reads the emails and answers the survey.

Enclosures:

Email letter - Inviting respondents to participate in the study

Geo-location Spec – The web instrument screens will be developed based off of this spec

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

CC list: Elizabeth Nichols, Lin Wang, (CSM) Francis McPhillips, (DMD), Nicholas Doner, (GEO), Christopher Jackman (GEO)