Memo to OMB

MEMORANDUM
TO:

Robert Sivinski
Office of Statistical and Science Policy
Office of Management and Budget

THROUGH:

Alexis R. Piquero, PhD
Director
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Kevin M. Scott
Deputy Director, Statistical Operations
Bureau of Justice Statistics

FROM:

Alexia D. Cooper
Chief, Law Enforcement Statistics Unit
Bureau of Justice Statistics

DATE:

February 27, 2023

SUBJECT:

BJS request to conduct cognitive interviewing to test the ability of
law enforcement agencies to report on revised race and ethnicity
categories under the OMB generic clearance agreement (OMB
Number 1121-0339).

Introduction
Under the direction of the Chief Statistician of the United States, OMB charged the Federal
Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards (Working Group) to
review OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (SPD No. 15), Standards for Maintaining,
Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity and provide recommendations
for revision. SPD No. 15 provides minimum standards that ensure the ability to compare
information and data across Federal agencies, and to understand how well Federal programs
serve a diverse America. The initial proposal from this group includes several revisions to the
categories currently in use.

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The purpose of this memorandum is to request approval for outreach to law enforcement
agencies (LEAs) to explore what information on race and ethnicity they regularly collect on
sworn and nonsworn personnel. Phone calls will be made to a small number of agencies and a
brief interview will be conducted to assess the ability of agencies to provide more detailed race
and ethnicity information on federal surveys. Further detail on this request is provided below.
Request for Cognitive Interviewing
This request is to conduct cognitive testing to examine what types of race and ethnicity
information LEAs collect on their sworn and nonsworn staff under BJS’s generic clearance
agreement (OMB Control Number 1121-0339). BJS staff is developing draft questions and has
contracted with RTI International to run the cognitive testing of the developed protocol (see
Attachment A for a cognitive interview protocol).
BJS’s current law enforcement agency surveys utilize a single combined race and ethnicity
question that captures the following categories:
a. White, non-Hispanic
b. Black or African American, non-Hispanic
c. Hispanic or Latino
d. American Indian or Alaska Native, non-Hispanic
e. Asian, non-Hispanic
f. Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic
g. Two or more races
h. Not known
The Working Group has issued a draft recommendation to add “Middle Eastern or North
African” (MENA) as a new category distinct from all other reporting categories. 1 The definition
of the current “White” reporting category would be edited to remove MENA from its definition.
In addition to the new minimum category, the working group has also recommended that more
detailed information be collected on each of the individual categories, and that each of the
categories should be further disaggregated by country of origin.
The cognitive interviewing plan (described below) is designed to (1) increase understanding of
how LEAs collect and store race and ethnicity data on sworn and nonsworn staff, (2) assess the
capability of LEAs to report on the newly proposed Middle Eastern or North African (MENA)
category, and (3) determine the feasibility of including more detailed questions on race and
ethnicity, such as country of origin, on law enforcement administrative surveys. The project staff
will review and summarize the results of the cognitive interviews to provide feedback to the
Working Group on the proposed changes.
Sample Selection
The sample selection process will classify LEAs across agency type (local police department,
sheriff’s office, constable, college/university LEA) and agency size for local police departments
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/27/2023-01635/initial-proposals-for-updating-ombs-raceand-ethnicity-statistical-standards.

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and sheriff’s offices (small agencies with less than 50 full-time equivalent sworn personnel,
medium agencies with 50-99 full-time equivalent sworn personnel, or large agencies with 100 or
more full-time equivalent sworn personnel). 2 Primary state police agencies are excluded from
cognitive interviewing due to the small number of agencies (N=49).
Using agency type and size as a framework, the project team will select agencies from a list of
agencies that have expressed a willingness to participate in future BJS research and development
activities. This list is a product of the 2022 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement
Agencies (CSLLEA) survey collection, where agencies were asked to voluntarily indicate their
willingness to be contacted for future activities. Since the 2022 CSLLEA data collection began
in November 2022 and is ongoing, the list is likely to be up to date and accurately reflect current
agency preferences. As BJS anticipates that some of the sampled agencies will be unable to
participate in the cognitive interview effort, a substitute agency will be selected for each of the
sampled agencies and contacted only if a replacement is needed. Up to 75 total agencies will be
contacted, though completed interviews will be capped at 50 total agencies.
BJS will target completing interviews with 50 LEAs: 5 constables, 5 college/university LEAs, 10
sheriff’s offices, and 30 local police departments. These proportions roughly reflect those of the
nationwide universe of agency types eligible for the cognitive interviews. The breakout of
desired respondents based on agency type and size is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Number of completed cognitive interviews by agency type and size
Full-Time
Local
Sheriff’s
Constable
College/
Equivalent
Police
Office
University
Sworn count
Department
LEA
Total
30
10
5
5
Large (100+)
Medium (50-99)
Small (1-49)

10
10
10

3
4
3

N/A
N/A
N/A

N/A
N/A
N/A

Total
50
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The intended respondent for the survey is the agency’s human resources administrator or another
staff member who is knowledgeable about the law enforcement agency’s personnel data. Based
on past experience with cognitive interviewing during development of the 2016 LEMAS
supplement (OMB Control Number 1121-0354, expired 2/28/2019), 2016 and 2020 LEMAS
core surveys (OMB Control Number 1121-0240, expired 6/30/2019 and expiring 7/31/2023,
respectively), 2018 CSLLEA (OMB Control Number 1121-0346, expired 4/30/2021), and 2018
Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies (CLETA; OMB Control Number 1121-0255,
expired 11/30/2021), the project team is confident that the resulting list of agencies prioritized
for cognitive interviewing will be diverse in characteristics and will provide a sampling of
potential obstacles to the proposed information collection.

An agency’s full-time equivalent sworn personnel count is the sum of the number of full-time sworn officers and
part-time sworn officers (who are counted as the equivalent of .5 full-time sworn officers) employed by that
agency.
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Initial contact with agencies will be conducted by email and led by RTI. The initial message will
thank the agency for their past participation in the 2022 CSLLEA and remind the agency that
they had indicated a wiliness to be included in future research and development activities. The
agency would then be invited to participate in a brief (30 minute) interview to test potential
changes in future BJS surveys and indicate that RTI would work with the agency to schedule the
interviews at a convenient time if the agency was still willing to participate (Attachment B).
Non-responders will be contacted within 2 weeks of initial outreach via email (Attachment C)
and then by phone (Attachment D). If an agency does not choose to participate, a replacement
from the same stratum will be selected and outreach will be made to recruit the new agency. The
replacement process will be repeated until the required number of respondents in each stratum is
obtained.
Once the agency has confirmed a willingness to participate, RTI will schedule POCs for a 30minute cognitive interview phone call. During this call, a member of the project team will
conduct a cognitive interview using a standardized interview guide (Attachment A). Participants
will be asked to highlight any aspects of the newly proposed categories that they found to be
unclear, any topics or categories that were omitted, or any response categories that were missing
or insufficient. Participants will not receive any compensation for the interview. The project
team will review the feedback from the cognitive interviews and provide a summary of the
results.
Cognitive testing will also provide an opportunity for BJS to calculate potential changes to the
burden that LEAs would have in responding to the newly proposed race and ethnicity categories.
This information will be taken into consideration as the BJS develops future surveys and will be
provided to the OMB working group.
Burden Hours
The burden hour estimates for the proposed cognitive interviews are provided in the following
table. BJS has estimated the respondent burden at 35.75 hours (Table 2). The burden is
comprised of three components: initial contact and scheduling and completion of the cognitive
interview. Up to 75 LEAs may be contacted and asked to participate in cognitive interviewing.
However, a maximum of 50 agencies will complete the cognitive interview. The estimate was
calculated using an assumed 30 minutes per respondent for the cognitive interview. The
respondents will not be requested to obtain any information in preparation for the interviews and
will only be asked to reflect on their current practices and procedures.
Table 2. Estimated burden hours for cognitive interviews.

Initial contact
Scheduling of interview
Complete cognitive interview
TOTAL HOURS

Average burden hours
per respondent
0.09
0.08
.50

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Total
maximum Est. burden
respondents
hours
75
6.75
50
4.0
50
25.0
35.75

Institutional Review Board
RTI’s IRB determined that the research conducted under the current BJS contract does not
constitute research involving human subjects as defined by the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations
(45 CFR 46.102) and approval of these activities by the RTI IRB is not necessary.
Contact Information
Questions regarding any aspect of this project can be directed to:
Alexia Cooper
Supervisory Statistician
Bureau of Justice Statistics
U.S. Department of Justice
810 7th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20531
Phone: (202) 307-0583
E-mail: Alexia.Cooper@usdoj.gov
Attachments
Attachment A: Cognitive Interview Protocol
Attachment B: Invitation Email
Attachment C: Nonresponse Follow-up Email
Attachment D: Nonresponse Follow-up Phone Script

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