Letter Invitation

«Date»

Dear «Name»,

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is conducting a cognitive research project with companies that have surface coal mining operations and file Form EIA-7A Annual Survey of Coal Production and Preparation. The goals of this research are to assess the ability of EIA-7A respondents to report information on productivity measures specific to surface mining and their understanding of terminology used in the industry. Surface coal production has exceeded underground coal production as a percentage of total national coal production since 1999. EIA is studying how to effectively measure productivity from surface mining operations. EIA is also interested in collecting feedback on the amount of time and effort it takes you to complete this annual survey.

Participation in this research is voluntary. For this research project, we will conduct telephone interviews with Form EIA-7A respondents between the dates of XX/XX – XX/XX. The interview will take approximately 30 minutes.

Your responses will be protected as confidential information and results from this study will be aggregated so that no aggregate statistics can be used to identify you or anyone in your organization.

Your opinions are important to us and we look forward to your participation. If you would like to participate in an interview, please use the following link below to set up

a date and time that work best with your schedule calendly.com/eia-survey-development-team/eia-7a-interview. Contact Anna Hamelin on my staff if you have any questions regarding this research project at (202) 586-0858, email anna.hamelin@eia.gov.

Sincerely yours,

Nanda Srinivasan, Director

Office of Survey Development and Statistical Integration

U.S. Energy Information Administration

1000 Independence Avenue SW

Washington DC 20585