LEAP Survey GEN IC Template

Request for new submission under the “Generic Clearance for Cognitive, Pilot and Field Studies for Bureau of Justice Statistics Data Collection Activities”

(OMB Control Number: 1121-0339)

T ITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Law Enforcement Agency Pulse (LEAP) survey

PURPOSE: The LEAP pilot is designed to assess the viability of an annual survey of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) by measuring (1) response rate and (2) data quality using questions from an established, previously fielded instrument, the 2020 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS). The pilot will use a shorter instrument than a typical LEMAS, a truncated data collection time frame and will feature an experimental design to test a more aggressive non-response and data quality follow-up strategy.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS: Local Government, specifically law enforcement agencies to include local police departments and sheriff’s offices

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [ ] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[ ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software) [ ] Small Discussion Group

[ ] Focus Group [ x] Other: pilot testing to assess viability

of an annual survey _

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name: Devon Adams

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ ] Yes [ x] No

2. If Yes, will any information that is collected be included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ ] No

3. If Yes, has an up-to-date System of Records Notice (SORN) been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Note: for any privacy related questions regarding your collection, please contact your component’s Senior Component Official for Privacy or the Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties.

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [ x] No

If answering yes, you will also need to describe the incentive and provide a justification for the amount.

BURDEN HOURS:

In the provided table, list the following information in each row for the type or respondent for the collection and provide total figures at the bottom for the number of respondents, participation time, and burden.

• Category of respondent – Provide the type or category of individual who will respond to your collection from the following list:

  • Individuals or Household

  • Private Sector

  • State, Local, or Tribal Governments

  • Federal Government

• Number of Respondents – Estimate of the total number of respondents by type/category.

• Participation Time – Estimate of the total amount of time (in minutes) required for participation in a collection by type/category of respondents (e.g. fill out a survey or participate in a focus group).

• Burden – Estimate of the annual burden hours by type/category or respondents.

  • To determine this estimate, multiply the number of respondents by the participation time and divide that figure by 60.

Burden Table

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time to complete form	Burden
Local Governments: LEAP pilot survey	506	40 minutes	337 hours
Totals	506	40 minutes	337 hours

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is __$368,780

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [x] Yes [ ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

Data collection for the LEAP pilot will take place between September and December 2024, using a sample of 506 LEAs taken from the Law Enforcement Agency Roster (LEAR) that is maintained as part of the LECS program.

The sample will be selected from the LEAR, the primary sampling frame for all Law Enforcement Core Statistics (LECS) program data collections. The LEAR was first developed in 2016 and is an enumeration of all publicly funded state, local, and tribal LEAs operating in the United States. It includes all general purpose¹ (i.e., local/county/regional police departments, sheriffs’ offices, and the 49 primary state and highway patrol agencies) and special purpose law enforcement agencies (LEAs; e.g., park police, transit, tribal, campus, and independent school districts) in the United States. The LEAR is routinely updated to reflect the changing landscape of LEAs in operation. Data from the 2022 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement (CSLLEA, OMB Control No. 1121-0346, expires 8/31/2025) that has been merged into the LEAR will be the primary source used to identify ineligibles and ensure the most accurate and timely data available before the LEAP pilot sample is created. For non-respondents to the 2022 CSLLEA, additional information will be used to establish in-service status, eligibility, and agency staffing size. Additional data sources integrated into the LEAR include: the 2019 FBI’s Police Employee Data, data from state Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) commissions or offices, and state chief and sheriffs’ association lists. The LEAR also accounts for information discovered during the administration of BJS surveys including the 2016 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) core, 2016 LEMAS Body-Worn Camera Supplement, 2018 CSLLEA, 2020 LEMAS core, 2021 Survey of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies (SCLEA), 2022 CSLLEA, and the 2023 LEMAS Post-Academy Training and Officer Wellness Survey (LEMAS PATOW). Information from these sources was merged and vetted, resulting in the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of law enforcement agencies known.

In addition, the following actions will be taken to reduce the possibility of including out-of-scope agencies from the LEAR:

1. Potential non-publicly funded LEAs (e.g., those serving private universities) will be identified and vetted to exclude ineligible agencies.

2. Publicly available information will be reviewed to determine if agencies do not have general sworn law enforcement authority.

3. Agency size will be checked across a variety of sources, including the 2020 LEMAS core and 2022 CSLLEA, in order to attempt to minimize the number of agencies in the frame with less than one full-time equivalent (FTE) sworn personnel.

The LEAP pilot sample will be selected using a stratified simple random sample design in which LEAs are stratified by agency type (local police departments and sheriff’s offices only) and agency size, with sampling done proportional to frame sizes. This process is consistent with previous LEMAS program surveys. Starting with the 2020 LEMAS, BJS and RTI developed a strategy to reduce burden on smaller agencies over time. Agencies with fewer than 100 full-time equivalent sworn personnel now have a low probability of being selected in more than one of the next five waves of LEMAS core or supplement administrations. LEAs with fewer than 100 full-time equivalent sworn personnel were assigned a permanent random number (PRN) and sorted by PRN within strata. The PRN is a random number selected uniformly between 0 and 1. After sorting the frame by the PRN, the first    agencies in each stratum were selected for the 2020 LEMAS and 2023 LEMAS PATOW (OMB Control No. 1121-0379, expires 9/30/2026) where    is the sample size for each stratum.

For the LEAP pilot survey, the following steps will be done to select the sample:

1. Any recently identified new agencies will be added to the frame and be assigned a PRN.

2. Closed or otherwise ineligible agencies will be removed from the frame.

3. If needed, strata assignments will be updated based on new size information.

4. A new sample will be selected by beginning after the maximum PRN from the 2023 LEAMS PATOW in each stratum and selecting the next    agencies in the stratum where    is the sample size for the stratum.

5. The sampling weight is calculated as    where    is the population size of the stratum at the time of sampling.

LEAs with 100 or more FTE sworn personnel are not included in the pilot sample.² There are two reasons for this decision. First, these largest agencies are considered self-representing agencies across LECS surveys, meaning they are selected with certainty for all surveys. Given the 2023 LEMAS PATOW has been in the field since November 2023, and the upcoming 2024 LEMAS survey is anticipated for January 2025, we do not want to contribute to survey fatigue among the self-representing agencies, particularly for a pilot program in which the data will not be released, and risk lowered participation in the 2024 LEMAS. Second, the self-representing agencies historically yield the highest response rates. Table 1 shows response rates from the 2020 LEMAS. As the pilot is looking to test how to potentially improve response rates through a shorter survey, we assume little needs to be assessed from the strata of LEAs that typically respond to considerably longer, more detailed surveys.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ x] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ ] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ ] Yes [ x] No

Submit all instruments, instructions, and scripts with the request.

1 General-purpose LEAs represent the population of active, publicly funded primary state agencies; sheriff’s offices; and municipal, county, or regional police departments. They are distinct from special-purpose agencies, sheriff’s offices with jail and court duties only, and federal LEAs.

2 All primary state LEAs have 100 or more FTEs, so no state agencies will be part of the LEAP pilot.

4