FR3016_20231024_omb

Supporting Statement for the
Ongoing Intermittent Survey of Households
(FR 3016; OMB No. 7100-0150)
Summary
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), under authority
delegated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has extended for three years, with
revision, the Ongoing Intermittent Survey of Households (FR 3016; OMB No. 7100-0150). The
Board uses this ad hoc voluntary survey to study consumer financial decisions, attitudes, and
payment behavior.1
The Board revised the FR 3016 by adding new questions to the survey.
The current estimated total annual burden for the FR 3016 is 160 hours, and would
increase to 199 hours. The revision would result in an increase of 39 hours.
Background and Justification
The Ongoing Intermittent Survey of Households was initiated in 1981. Over the past 41
years, the survey data have helped the Board understand consumer credit markets and consumer
behavior. The Board has used the data to meet the current analysis needs of the Board to respond
to mandates from the Congress, to prepare academic research papers, and to provide information
to the public.
The survey has provided the Board useful studies of the influence of consumer spending
and saving decisions in determining the course of the national economy, which may not be
readily available if the survey were not conducted.
The Board asks questions on inflation and house price expectations monthly.
Additionally, four to six times per year, the Board poses recurring special-interest questions.
Examples of recent recurring questions were regularly fielded modules on car purchases and
their financing (vehicle financing), and retrospective questions on behavior of inflation over the
past 12 months and the past 5-10 years (past prices). This information is not available from other
sources and helps Board staff to gauge, for example, the potential effects of economic factors,
such as gas prices or current financing conditions, on household spending.

Certain criteria apply to information collections conducted via the Board’s ad hoc clearance process. Such
information collections shall (1) be vetted by the Board’s clearance officer, as well as the Division director
responsible for the information collection, (2) display the OMB control number, (3) inform respondents that the
information collection has been approved, (4) be used only in such cases where response is voluntary, (5) not be
used to substantially inform regulatory actions or policy decisions, (6) be conducted only and exactly as described in
the OMB submission, (7) involve only noncontroversial subject matter that will not raise concerns for other Federal
agencies, (8) include a detailed justification of the effective and efficient statistical survey methodology (if
applicable), and (9) collect personally identifiable information (PII) only to the extent necessary (if collecting
sensitive PII, the form must display current Privacy Act notice). In addition, for each information collection
instrument, respondent burden will be tracked and submitted to OMB.
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Finally, on occasion, the Board may request additional questions to be added to the
survey, depending on need. Since the last clearance approval in October 2020, this ad-hoc
authority has not been used.
Description of Information Collection
The Board has a contract with the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center
(SRC) to include survey questions on behalf of the Board in an addendum to the SRC’s regular
monthly Survey of Consumers. The Board drafts and edits the addendum questions in
consultation with the SRC, whose program involves careful questionnaire development. The
SRC’s survey guidelines produce questionnaires that are clear and reliable, and mitigate any
duplication between the Board’s addendum questions and the SRC’s regular questions. The SRC
conducts the survey by telephone with a sample of approximately 600 households and asks
questions of special interest to the Board. The Board reports burden, under the Paperwork
Reduction Act, for the Board-designed question portion of the larger survey.
For each monthly SRC survey conducted, the SRC staff sample approximately 600
households from the universe of all private households in the coterminous United States. The
sample is designed to be representative of the national population of households. The SRC staff
conduct the interviews by telephone, to respondents’ cellular phone numbers, and participation is
voluntary. The Board drafts and edits the addendum questions in consultation with the SRC
personnel. The SRC conducts a field pretest of the questions.
The survey includes questions about inflation and house prices expectations monthly and
includes recurring questions of special interest to the Board. In the past, the Board has added
special-interest questions in about four to six surveys each year in addition to the standard Board
questions regarding inflation and house price expectations. On occasion, additional questions
may be added, as needed, as additions to the SRC’s regular survey format. These short-term
questions have included: in 2012, questions regarding consumer experiences with credit cards; in
2011 and again in 2014, questions regarding the impact of temporary payroll tax reductions and
subsequent payroll tax increase; in 2016, questions for 5 months regarding consumers’
perceptions of price changes and inflation. It is difficult to determine in advance the specific
number of times the Board will ask the SRC to obtain survey data since the need for data often
arises from unpredictable legislative and economic developments, or from unforeseen
Congressional requests for information. Although the Board plans some surveys well in advance,
the survey’s principal value is the flexibility it provides the Board to respond quickly to changing
economic, legislative, and regulatory developments.
Respondent Panel
The FR 3016 panel comprises individuals living in households in the coterminous United
States.

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Frequency and Time Schedule
The FR 3016 is collected monthly. For each month’s survey, an independent crosssection sample of households is drawn. The respondents chosen in this drawing are then
reinterviewed six and twelve months later.
Revisions to the FR 3016
The full SRC survey averages approximately 25 to 30 minutes per month per respondent,
and the Board revised the FR 3016 to add one to two new Board-developed questions to its
portion of the survey. The additional questions are expected to change based on Board
requirements and the economic conditions at the time of survey fielding, but can include
questions about an individual’s opinion on such matters as financing needs, or other aspects of
consumer financial behavior. The survey results will help the Board to broaden its monitoring of
changes in current financing conditions on household spending and other financial outcomes.
The Board estimates that as a result of the new questions, the monthly average minutes per
response will increase from 1.6 to 1.65, or 19.8 minutes annually. This is an increase of 0.05
minutes monthly, or 0.6 minutes annually. A burden estimate was also added to the collection to
reflect the pretesting of the new survey component questions with a small number of
respondents.
Public Availability of Data
SRC staff code and edit the interview responses and transmit the data to the Board. The
Board tabulates and analyzes the data but does not publish the survey data that it obtains.
However, survey information is frequently cited in published material such as professional
journals, the Federal Reserve Bulletin, and testimony and reports to the Congress.
Under the terms of the Board’s contract, the SRC routinely places individual respondent
data, stripped of names and other characteristics that would permit personal identification of
respondents, in the public domain one year after the data file with survey responses is received
by the Board. The SRC publishes survey data on the Inter-university Consortium for Political
and Social Research (ICPSR) website, https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/. The Board is a
member institution of ICPSR.
Legal Status
The Board uses the information obtained through the FR 3016 to discharge its statutory
responsibilities, including those under sections 2A (12 U.S.C. § 225a)2 and 12A (12 U.S.C. §
248a)3 of the Federal Reserve Act. Survey submissions under the FR 3016 are voluntary.
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Requiring the Board and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to maintain long run growth of the
monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to
promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
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Requiring the FOMC to implement regulations relating to the open market operations conducted by the Federal
Reserve Banks with a view to accommodating commerce and business and with regard to their bearing upon the
general credit situation of the country.

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Personally identifiable information associated with individual responses to the FR 3016
will be kept confidential under exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the
extent that it is information “the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted
invasion of personal privacy (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6)).
For other data fields, individual respondents may request confidential treatment in
accordance with the Board’s Rules Regarding Availability of Information.4 Requests for
confidential treatment of information are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Information may be
protected from disclosure to the extent that its disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted
invasion of personal privacy under FOIA exemption 6, or under any other applicable FOIA
exemption.
Consultation Outside the Agency
There has been no consultation outside the Federal Reserve System.
Public Comments
On March 30, 2023, the Board published an initial notice in the Federal Register (88 FR
19145) requesting public comment for 60 days on the extension, with revision, of the FR 3016.
The comment period for this notice expired on May 30, 2023. The Board did not receive any
comments. The Board adopted the extension, with revision, of the FR 3016 as originally
proposed. On July 19, 2023, the Board published a final notice in the Federal Register (88 FR
46161).
Estimate of Respondent Burden
As shown in the table below, the estimated total annual burden for the FR 3016 (the
Board’s questions within the larger survey) is 160 hours, and would increase to 199 hours with
the revisions. The estimated average annual minutes per response are derived from a proposed
contractual agreement between the SRC and the Board for approximately 19.8 minutes of
response time per respondent and 6 minutes for a small number of respondents. The number of
respondents is based on the current survey methodology used in production of the SRC’s Survey
of Consumers. These reporting requirements represent less than 1 percent of the Board’s total
paperwork burden.

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12 CFR 261.17.

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FR 3016

Estimated
number of
respondents

Estimated
annual
frequency

Estimated
Estimated
average minutes annual burden
per response
hours

Current

500

12

1.6

160

Proposed
Survey
Pretest

600
10

12
1

1.65
6

Proposed Total

198
1
199

Change

39

The estimated total annual cost to the public for the FR 3016 is $4,800, and would
increase to $5,970 with the revisions.5
Sensitive Questions
These collections of information contain no questions of a sensitive nature, as defined by
OMB guidelines.
Estimate of Cost to the Federal Reserve System
The estimated cost to the Federal Reserve System for collecting and processing this
information collection is $180,300.

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The average consumer cost of $30 is estimated using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Occupational
Employment and Wages, May 2022, published April 25, 2023, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.t01.htm.

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