[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 61 (Monday, March 31, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 18007-18010]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-07061]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request
The Department of Commerce will submit to the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) for clearance the following proposal for collection of
information under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act (44
U.S.C. chapter 35).
Agency: U.S. Census Bureau.
Title: 2014 Census Test.
OMB Control Number: None.
Form Number(s): The two basic forms to be tested are DC-1A and DC-
1B.
[[Page 18008]]
Numerous other documents such as letters, postcards, and call-back
cards will be utilized in the test but are too numerous to list here.
Type of Request: New collection.
Burden Hours: 31,750.
Number of Respondents: 190,500.
Average Hours per Response: 10 minutes.
Needs and Uses: During the years preceding the 2020 Census, the
Census Bureau will pursue its commitment to reducing the cost of
conducting the next decennial census, while striving to maintain the
level of quality it achieved for previous ones. A primary decennial
census cost driver is the collection of data from members of the public
for which the Census Bureau received no reply via initially offered
response options. Increasing the number of people who take advantage of
self-response options (such as completing a paper questionnaire and
mailing it back to the Census Bureau) can contribute to a less costly
census with high-quality results. An overall objective of the Census
Bureau is to increase self-response in the decennial census by making
it easier to respond to the population and housing unit count. The
Census Bureau has committed to using the Internet as a primary response
option in the 2020 Census. We need to study ways to promote the
Internet as a self-response option for the 2020 Census; identify
methods to communicate directly with respondents to alert them about
the census data collection timeframe; provide each household a specific
identification number to allow them to self-respond via the Internet;
and allow options such as telephone questionnaire assistance to ensure
respondents are comfortable with the use of this new data collection
alternative.
The 2014 Census Test (formerly known as the 2014 Census Site Test)
will allow the Census Bureau to study a variety of new methods and
advanced technologies that are under consideration for the 2020 Census.
To improve self-response, the Census Bureau plans to test new contact
and notification strategies such as allowing respondents to pre-
register their email address, cell phone number (for texting
capabilities), mailing address, and physical location, and provide a
preference for a contact strategy of either email or text. Furthermore,
participants will have the option of responding to the test via
multiple response modes including the Internet, paper questionnaires,
and telephone interviews. Nonrespondents will be followed up via
telephone and personal visit interviews using Computer Assisted
Telephone Interviews (CATI) and Computer Assisted Personal Interview
(CAPI) automated instruments. The Census Bureau plans to examine the
following nonresponse followup (NRFU) design and implementation
alternatives:
Using administrative supported with commercial vendor
data;
varying the number of field followup contact attempts
either in a prescribed fashion or applying an adaptive design (AD)
approach to choose contact strategies on a housing unit basis. Frame
data, paradata, administrative records supported with commercial vendor
data, and cost data are used to prioritize cases and determine their
contact types and stopping rules;
changing the rules for when an enumerator can collect data
from a proxy respondent; and
collecting data for nonrespondents with automated devices
such as tablets and smartphones.
In addition, the 2014 Census Test provides an opportunity for the
Census Bureau to test potential enhancements to its automated
processing of responses lacking a pre-assigned Census identification
(ID) number. When a respondent does not provide their unique Census ID
number on their questionnaire, any address data supplied by him or her
must undergo Non-ID Processing. Non-ID Processing is a comparison of
respondent-provided addresses to the Census Bureau's national inventory
of living quarters addresses.
The 2014 Census Test will be conducted in a single geographic area
in Washington, DC and Montgomery County, MD. This test will include
contacting up to 190,500 housing units. For these addresses, the
testing includes an initial self-response phase followed by a
nonresponse followup (NRFU) phase for no more than 50,000 non-
responding housing units. Furthermore, 250 of these 50,000 housing
units will fall into Bring Your Own Device Testing, which is where the
Census Bureau will experiment with using employee-owned, commercial
smartphones to conduct NRFU. The households in NRFU are a sample of
those who have failed to self-respond to the 2014 Census Test by a
certain deadline. A Census Bureau employee will visit or phone these
households to attempt to collect their questionnaire data. The number
of personal visits or telephone call attempts to collect the data from
nonrespondents will vary, based on alternative methods being tested.
For the self-response phase of the test, the Census Bureau will
randomly assign sampled housing units to one of eight different contact
and enumeration strategies. Each strategy aims to increase the use of
self-response enumeration in a decennial census. Sampled housing units
will initially receive a letter or a postcard containing instructions
about how to respond to the test online using a unique Census ID
provided by the Census Bureau. Some households will receive a notice
that allows them to pre-register for the Census and to notify the
Census Bureau of their communication preference (that is, email or
text). The telephone questionnaire assistance option will be available
to all households. Respondents can respond by going to the Internet
site or contacting the telephone questionnaire assistance center. For
those participants who have not responded by late June, the Census
Bureau will contact them with a final postcard reminder and then a
paper questionnaire by mail, if necessary, on or around July 15.
The geographic area for the 2014 Census Test contains two strata
within Washington, DC and Montgomery County, MD: One stratum is more
likely to respond while the other is less likely to respond. Each of
the contact and enumeration strategies will be tested in both strata.
The difference in characteristics in the two strata will allow the
Census Bureau to gather a variety of cost data associated with mileage
and hours spent traveling to housing units and interviewing
respondents. In addition, Time and Motion studies will be conducted to
determine if/how we can produce efficiencies in the NRFU data
collection operation.
The 2014 Census Test will look to modify the 2010 NRFU operation to
increase efficiency and to reduce costs. One difference from procedures
in the 2010 Census will be that telephone numbers will be provided to
enumerators (when possible) with their case assignment. These numbers
will come from a supplemental contact frame developed from commercial
data sources. A second difference is that data will be collected on
automated enumeration devices, whereas the 2010 Census NRFU data were
collected on paper questionnaires. Another difference is that the
``notice of visit'' left at the door when a respondent is not home will
contain information on how a respondent can self-respond via the
Internet or by calling the Census Bureau's telephone questionnaire
assistance line. The intent of this feature is to reduce the number of
return visits by encouraging respondents to complete
[[Page 18009]]
their questionnaires online or by telephone.
For the 2014 Census Test, the Census Bureau will test the use of an
automated enumeration device or instrument in field operations. The
enumeration device, called the Census Operations Mobile Platform for
Adaptive Services and Solutions (COMPASS), is a new development effort
with the goal of replacing paper-based data collection methods
historically used in decennial operations such as NRFU. The plan is
that the COMPASS instrument will be able to be loaded on consumer-grade
devices, such as iPhones and iPads. The test will help inform:
The feasibility of conducting a field operation with the
use of consumer grade devices (for example, iPhones and iPads).
The feasibility of replacing traditional paper maps from
the Census Bureau's TIGER System with Google Maps for locating housing
units for enumeration activities.
The feasibility of collecting GPS coordinates with the
COMPASS instrument.
In addition, the Census Bureau will experiment with using employee-
owned, commercial smartphones to conduct NRFU. Employee-owned
equipment/services are commonly referred to as Bring Your Own Device or
BYOD. A separate sample of 250 households will be contacted at the end
of the NRFU field operation to test the BYOD alternative against the
COMPASS instrument, Google maps, and other systems being used for the
test.
The objectives of this additional study are as follows:
--Design, develop, deploy, and support software solutions and processes
that run on commercially available employee-owned mobile devices (that
is, iPhone).
--Deploy and support secure software solutions that can be installed on
commercially available employee-owned mobile devices.
--Conduct interviews with respondents using employee-owned mobile
devices.
--Capture lessons learned.
Content Testing
The 2014 Census Test questionnaire will include questions on
housing tenure, household roster, age, date of birth, race and Hispanic
origin, and relationship. The 2014 Census Test will include testing of
a combined race and Hispanic origin question that is similar to one
used in the 2012 National Census Test. Based on results from the 2010
Race and Hispanic Origin Alternative Questionnaire Experiment (Compton,
et. al. 2012), the 2014 Census Test provides an opportunity to further
test the ``streamlined'' version of a combined race and Hispanic origin
question. This modified version of the combined question removes the
term ``Negro'' from the ``Black or African Am.'' checkbox and provides
a shortened list of examples for the ``Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish
origin,'' ``Asian,'' and ``Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander''
checkbox categories. This combined question provides examples and
write-in areas for each major response category. Respondents are asked
to self-identify themselves by selecting one or more checkboxes and
reporting a specific origin for each checkbox selected. The 2014 Census
Test will involve testing two versions of a combined race and Hispanic
origin question against separate race and Hispanic origin questions in
the Internet data collection; and testing a single version of the
combined question on the paper questionnaire and in the COMPASS.
For the relationship question, the 2014 Census Test will involve
the testing of new response categories for opposite sex and same sex
husband/wife/spouse and unmarried partner. In Internet data collection
and on the paper questionnaire, two versions of the relationship
question will be tested against each other: the traditional version and
the new version with response options both opposite sex and same sex
husband/wife/spouse and unmarried partner. The COMPASS will use the new
version.
The results of the 2014 Census Test will guide the design of
additional 2020 Census testing later this decade. Testing in 2014 is
necessary to establish recommendations for contact strategies, response
options, and field operation efficiencies that can be further refined
and tested in later mid-decade tests. At this point in the decade, the
Census Bureau needs to acquire evidence showing whether the strategies
being tested can reduce the costs of a decennial census, while
maintaining the quality of the census data.
The response rates to paper and Internet have ``practical
utility,'' i.e., the information will be used for a practical and
necessary 2020 Decennial program planning and determination of metrics.
The use of several software and operating systems for field data
collection has ``practical utility'' for the 2020 Decennial program
planning and determination of options for software deployment. Several
demographic questions and coverage probes are included to contribute to
other recent testing opportunities to achieve optimal coverage for
decennial censuses and surveys.
In the geographically restricted test areas where the Census Bureau
will conduct NRFU, the 2014 Census Test is designed to collect
information to (1) research the cost and quality impacts of differing
NRFU contact strategies, and (2) test the use and functionality of
mobile computing devices by the field staff. Research on the
alternative NRFU respondent contact strategies will be conducted to
discern if differing instructions to enumerators on the number of
contact attempts they should make leads to improved cost and
productivity measures. Both fixed and adaptive design alternatives for
contact strategies will be tested and compared. For the fixed panels,
all NRFU cases will get two personal visit attempts with one telephone
contact attempt in between for households where telephone numbers are
available and provided to the enumerator. For the adaptive design
panels an adaptive design model will indicate to the enumerator which
cases are the highest priority to attempt on the current day, using
information particular to the specific cases. Results from both of
these alternative strategies will be compared to a control panel that
will conduct NRFU operations similar to what was done in the 2010
Census. The testing will also obtain detailed data on the use of
telephone contacts by enumerators (including the occurrence of inbound
telephone calls to the TQA centers) and data on when and how
enumerators use proxy respondents. Another major piece of the test is
to introduce the use of mobile computing devices and IT processes in
field operations to determine if/how these may produce efficiencies in
data collection.
The specific goal for the Non-ID Processing research is to evaluate
enhancements to the Census Bureau's process to collect address
information and for matching and geocoding Non-ID responses via batch
processing. Testing enhancements to Non-ID processing early in the
decade will inform early planning for the 2020 Census design, as well
as the infrastructure required to support large-scale processing of
electronic Non-ID response data submitted via the Internet or a Census-
provided questionnaire application designed for mobile devices.
The data collected from households and individuals during the 2014
Census Test will be used to research and evaluate new methodologies and
systems to plan the 2020 Census. The Census Bureau will not publish any
tabulations or population estimates from
[[Page 18010]]
the substantive results from this test. However, methodological papers
may be written that include tallies of response characteristics or
problems identified, and responses may be used to inform future
research studies building upon the results of these tests.
Affected Public: Individuals or households.
Frequency: One time.
Respondent's Obligation: Mandatory.
Legal Authority: Title 13, United States Code, Sections 141 and
193.
OMB Desk Officer: Brian Harris-Kojetin, (202) 395-7314.
Copies of the above information collection proposal can be obtained
by calling or writing Jennifer Jessup, Departmental Paperwork Clearance
Officer, (202) 482-0336, Department of Commerce, Room 6616, 14th and
Constitution Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20230 (or via the Internet at
[email protected]).
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information
collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice
to Brian Harris-Kojetin, OMB Desk Officer either by fax (202-395-7245)
or email ([email protected]).
Dated: March 26, 2014.
Glenna Mickelson,
Management Analyst, Office of the Chief Information Officer.
[FR Doc. 2014-07061 Filed 3-28-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P