OMB Memo

Generic Information Collection Request: Focus groups with Soup Kitchen Administrators to Inform 2030 Decennial Data Collection

Request: The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the pretesting clearance (OMB number 0607-0725). We plan to conduct up to three focus groups with administrators of soup kitchens. Data from the focus groups will help inform 2030 strategies and plans for enumerating the population without conventional housing, including those experiencing homelessness. This study is exploratory in nature focusing on ideas for alternative ways to count this population, seek additional locations where we might count people experiencing homelessness, and review the definition the Census Bureau uses for soup kitchens during the group quarter validation process.

Purpose: The purpose of the focus groups is to gather ideas for how to enumerate the population who use soup kitchen services. This study will gather feedback from soup kitchen administrations on their opinions of how to best count the population they serve and their opinions of modifications to definitions used to classify soup kitchen during group quarters validation.

Population of Interest: The population of interest is people who work at soup kitchens or soup kitchen administrators.

Timeline: We plan to conduct the focus groups in January-March 2024.

Language: The focus group will be in English only.

Focus Group Administration: Focus groups will be 90-minute and conducted virtually through Microsoft Teams. Participants will be emailed a link to the consent form and asked to sign before the focus group. The consent form will be programmed in Qualtrics and is found in Attachment 1. If the participant has not signed prior to the focus group, we will gain oral consent to record from the participant. The session will be recorded via Snagit. A Census Bureau moderator will follow the protocol outlined in Attachment 2 and when appropriate show the slides in Attachment 3 via the share screen option in MS Teams. Besides the moderator and participants, a note taker and other Census Bureau staff working on the soup kitchen enumeration project will be observers on the virtual focus groups.

Sample: We will conduct up to three focus groups with six to eight soup kitchen administrators in each focus group. This is an opt-in sample.

Recruitment: We will recruit via contacts that the Field Division has made as part of their research on enumerating those who are experiencing homelessness. The Field Division will use a snowball sampling approach to acquire additional participants based on the networks of their contacts. To participate, the Field Division team members will call the contacts and ask questions from the phone screener which will be programmed in a Qualtrics instrument. See Attachment 4 for the phone screener questionnaire. We will send an email to the participant to finalize the scheduled time and to send the consent form prior to the focus group (See Attachment 5 for the confirmation email). We also have emails that we have drafted for targeted distribution for contacts that the team may have and an email we have developed to send for a BOC Broadcast (See Attachment 6).

Incentive: Participants will not be provided an incentive for their participation in the focus group.

Burden hours: We estimate that recruiting telephone calls and emails to schedule participants will take up to 4 minutes each. We estimate that the focus group will take 90 minutes.

The burden associated with specific tasks is summarized in Table 2. We estimate the total burden for this study to be 29 hours.

Table 1: Description of burden hours by task

	Number of participants	Participation time	Total burden hours
Recruiting calls /emails for focus groups	30	4	120 min
Focus group	18	90	1,620 min
Total burden			1,740 min or 29 hours

The materials to be used in the current study are listed below:

Attachment 1: Soup Kitchen Focus Group Consent Form

Attachment 2: Soup Kitchen Focus Group Moderator’s Guide

Attachment 3: Display of Definitions

Attachment 4: Soup Kitchen Recruitment Screener

Attachment 5: Confirmation Email

Attachment 6: Recruitment Emails

The contact person for questions regarding data collection and statistical aspects of the design of this research is listed below:

Renee Stepler

Center for Behavioral Science Methods

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, D.C. 20233

(301) 763-7882

Renee.A.Stepler@census.gov

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