Description of Disability Perceptions Survey

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 0960-0788)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Disability Perceptions Survey Pretest

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY:

Background: The Social Security Administration (SSA) is seeking to learn more about American adults’ knowledge and understanding of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and of those who qualify for this benefit. We are working with an SSA‑approved contractor, NORC at the University of Chicago (https://www.norc.org/Pages/default.aspx), who will ultimately conduct a Disability Perception Survey (DPS) with the public to obtain this information. While we will eventually obtain full OMB Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) approval for the survey, NORC would first like to conduct a pretest for usability purposes of the proposed survey questions. This generic clearance request is for approval of the usability pretest.

Objectives: SSA’s goals for this generic clearance are to determine if the proposed DPS survey questions adequately assess public opinions of the SSDI program and its beneficiaries. We also hope to ensure we programmed the instrument correctly, and to estimate the response rate.

Methodology: NORC will sample respondents for the study from NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel, which is a panel designed to be representative of the U.S. household population. AmeriSpeak will notify respondents via email that a new survey is available for them to complete. Respondents will access the survey through the AmeriSpeak portal, and will have two weeks to complete the survey. When respondents access the survey, they will see a consent statement that explains the survey and their rights as a respondent. The consent statement informs the respondent that we will be asking them to provide their Social Security Number (SSN), explains why we are requesting this information, and how we will use the information. In the final version of this survey, we will require the respondent’s full SSN so that we can later match responses to administrative data on applications and benefits. We are concerned that this requirement will lead to a low response rate. One purpose of this pre-test is to estimate that response rate, so we will initially ask respondents to provide their full SSN. In the pre-test only, we will ask those who refuse to provide their full SSN to provide the last four digits instead. Respondents who also refuse to provide the last four digits of their SSN will not proceed to the survey and will not receive payment. AmeriSpeak will pay respondents who provide their SSN and complete the survey. The results of this pretest will not ultimately become part of the actual, full survey results. Rather, NORC and SSA will use these results to help us optimize the survey questions. For example, we will assess information such as whether our proposed DPS questions adequately target the areas we want to assess as part of the DPS; if we should word questions differently; and if we should reorder the survey questions.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

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

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

[] Focus Group [ ] Other: ______________________

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: Kai Filion, Office of Research and Demonstration, Social Security Administration

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

Personally Identifiable Information:

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

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

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [ X ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

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

AmeriSpeak will offer a cash incentive of $20.00.

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time (minutes)	Burden (hours)
Individuals	250	20	83

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $5,000.

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?

The universe of potential respondents is members of the AmeriSpeak panel in the United States and aged 18 to 64 years old.¹ The participant selection criteria for this research is as follows:

NORC will select the sample for the pretest from the AmeriSpeak panel using a stratified sample design with the following stratification variables:

• Census Region of the panelist (Northeast, Midwest, South, West)

• Race/ethnicity of the panelist (non-Hispanic White/non-Hispanic All Other, Hispanic/non-Hispanic Black)

• Age of the panelist (18-49 years old, 50-64 years old)

• Educational attainment of the panelist (Some college or less,² 4-year college or above)

• Sex of the panelist (Male, Female)

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

USE OF RESULTS

SSA and NORC will use the results of this pretest to determine if our proposed DPS survey instrument is optimally accurate, written, organized, and sized. By examining the responses from the pretest respondents, as well as any other comments they provide, we can determine what changes we need to make (if any) to the DPS instrument. We will speak to the uses of the DPS survey when we pursue PRA approval and publish a request for public comments as part of that process.

Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the request.

Attached is a copy of the survey questions.

NAME OF CONTACT PERSON: Kai Filion, Social Security Administration, Office of Retirement and Disability Policy/Office of Research and Demonstration

PHONE NUMBER: 603-205-4504

1 Details about the AmeriSpeak panel can be found at https://www.amerispeak.org/about-amerispeak, and details about the sampling plan are attached.

2 `Some college or less’ refers to panelists with an educational attainment of some high school, high school graduate, GED graduate, associate degree, or college without a degree.

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