non-Subst change memo for ERS LAFA Retail final clean 1 17 23 758 pm

United States Department of Agriculture

Research, Education, and Economics

Economic Research Service

TO: Anthony Nerino, Office of Management and Budget

FROM: Linda Kantor, Economic Research Service

DATE: January 17, 2023

SUBJECT: OMB CONTROL NUMBER: 0536-0073

Nonsubstantive Change Resulting from the Revised Procedures for the Request to Conduct Exploratory Semi-Structured Interviews on Retail Food Loss

This memo describes revisions to the Interview Guide (Appendix J) and Informational List of Interview Questions and Topics (Appendix G) for the semi-structured interviews with retail companies that will be conducted as part of the approved information request titled, Request to Conduct Exploratory Semi-Structured Interviews on Retail Food Loss. The revisions resulted in a lower total burden estimate for the study from 127 minutes per participating company to 96 minutes per participating company; this resulted in a reduction of 5 burden hours. A revised burden table is provided as an attachment.

In the Interview Guide (Appendix J), the individual questions about food donations and intra-store transfers were consolidated. This content was succinctly summarized, and these practices will be discussed when we review the table of data fields needed for a potential national food loss study. In an earlier round of revisions, we consolidated Shipments, Sales, and Random Weight sections of the Guide and will ask about those pieces of data when we review the data fields table with interview participants. Together, we estimate these changes will reduce the interview time from the original 90 minutes to no more than 60 minutes. We anticipate that the reduced interview length will enhance companies’ willingness to participate in the interviews, while yielding information that will be useful to inform the design of a potential national study.

To ensure consistency between Appendices G and J, we revised Appendix G (the question list sent to participants in advance of the interviews) by using a simplified version of the new language from Appendix J. We retained the introductory language from the older version of Appendix G with some minor edits.

Additionally, in both Appendix G and Appendix J, we made minor changes to wording to improve clarity.

Attachments:

Appendix G: Revised Informational List of Interview Questions and Topics

Appendix J: Revised Interview Guide

Burden Table: Revised

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