**In the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS):**

# Introduction

Over the 25-year history of EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey
(RECS), response at various stages of this survey system has slowly but
steadily decreased, from about 90 percent for the earliest surveys to
the 70's for the last few cycles. This trend, which mirrors the
experience of most government household surveys, including personal
interview surveys, is especially troublesome for RECS. The RECS is
actually a sequence of interconnected data collections: a survey of the
household to get its energy-related characteristics, a request during
the household survey to get the household respondent to sign a waiver
form allowing the household's energy suppliers to submit billing
information, and then a survey of the suppliers to collect the energy
consumption and expenditures information. All of these collections are
necessary to get a complete set of survey data; therefore, nonresponse
at each stage has a cumulative negative effect on data quality. This
presentation will describe an aggressive, multi-faceted strategy that
EIA has planned to address the comprehensive nonresponse issue.

# Approaches to Address Nonresponse

EIA is choosing to take a more intensive approach to respondent
recruitment from the very beginning of the household contact process. We
plan to send out introductory postcards to prospective sample
households, announcing the upcoming RECS and letting them know that
explanatory information will be coming soon. The introductory letters
themselves are being reworked to make them more upbeat and encouraging
to potential respondents rather than being bureaucratic renditions of
the necessary information. Included in the letters will be the mention
of gifts as a token of thanks for completing the survey.

In addition, the letter will emphasize EIA's capability and
responsibility to protect the respondent's identifiable data due to the
requirements imposed by the Confidential Information Protection and
Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA), under which the 2005 RECS
will be collected. Interviewers will also be trained to emphasize the
protections afforded to respondents by CIPSEA and the lengths to which
EIA goes to keep identifiable data secure and assure that it is not
disclosed. It is unclear how much such assurances will help, because of
public sensitivity to recent incidents where massive databases of
personal information were accessed by hackers. However, our assurances,
combined with the fact that the information we collect is not all that
sensitive for the most part, will hopefully minimize respondent
reluctance due to privacy concerns.

Once the interviewer makes contact with the sample household, (s)he will
have a variety of incentives to help to encourage participation. Some of
these will be non-monetary: the interviewer will have energy-saving
brochures, and when it comes time for the respondent to sign the utility
authorization form, the interviewer will provide the respondent a pen
that they can keep upon signing the form. The major incentive, however,
will be an unconditional monetary incentive, offered at the time that
the interviewer first makes contact with the prospective household
respondent. In order to assess the effectiveness of the incentive, the
monetary incentive program will be carried out as a carefully designed
experiment. An expected 1/3 of sample households will not be offered an
incentive; 1/3 will be offered \$5.00, and the other 1/3 will be offered
\$10.00 (the interview is expected to take an average of 45 minutes).
The division of households into the various incentive classes will be at
the segment level, to avoid the jealous neighbor issue. The exact form
of the monetary incentive has not yet been finalized, but it will be
cash or a cash equivalent. Recent studies have shown that unconditional
incentives, offered as a token of appreciation rather than as a payment
for services, can help to elicit response, because the prospective
respondent appreciates the thought and because the interviewer feels
more confident about his/her prospects for success.

The 2005 RECS will be the first cycle conducted using a comprehensive
new sample design for which field listing is now taking place. Using
contemporary geographic information, areas of heavy concentration of
Spanish-speaking households in the new sample have been identified. In
many of these households, at least the prospective adult respondent may
have limited or virtually no English skills. Bilingual interviewers will
be recruited and used in these areas. EIA is also paying for a Spanish
translation of the RECS questionnaire to be built into the Blaise system
that is used as the driver of the interview and case management for the
RECS computer-assisted interview. Hopefully these measures will minimize
the issue of nonresponse due to language difficulty in these areas.
Spanish as a household language occurs sufficiently frequently that it
makes sense to pursue these initiatives; unfortunately, we cannot pursue
them to address other language groups.

Of course, despite our best efforts a certain group of prospective
respondents will refuse to participate. Field staff will be instructed
to determine the primary reason for nonresponse. Response conversion
letters sent to the prospective respondent prior to personal follow-up
will be customized to address that primary reason, be it
security/confidentiality concerns, lack of time, uncertainty about the
purpose of the survey, or general refusal. Hopefully, our letters and
follow-up efforts will convert a reasonable percentage of initial
nonrespondents, but if household nonresponse shows itself to be an
ongoing problem, EIA will have the option of subsampling "soft"
nonresponse cases later in the field period. Nonresponse subsampling
will allow the field staff to devote more effort to converting a reduced
number of nonresponse cases. Sampling weights for these cases will be
adjusted to reflect the subsampling process.

Noncollection of energy consumption and expenditures data is a separate
problem. Reasons include refusals on the part of the household
respondent or the energy supplier; inaccessibility of the energy
supplier (especially a problem for fuel oil and propane dealers);
difficulty in associating the account as provided by the household
respondent with corresponding supplier records; and the difficult issue
of master metering in apartment buildings. To address these issues, EIA
has authorized our data collection contractor to provide scanners for
their interviewers. In advance contacts with the household, we will ask
them to have available the latest bills from their energy suppliers. The
information from these scanned images, when added to the household
interview database, will hopefully eliminate problems with misunderstood
and misreported supplier names and account numbers. Also, in the
ever-increasing number of cases where energy suppliers show historical
consumption information on the bill, we will have substantial
information even if we are not able to get a response from an energy
supplier.

Scanners cannot of themselves solve the problem of master metering.
However, interviewers will have them available in a separate survey
interview process where they contact the rental agents to get
information about the building in which the sample household is located.
The interviewer will ask the rental agent for a latest bill covering any
master-metered account for the building, and will scan those bills.
Later, statistical staff can use the information as an aid in prorating
energy use specific to the sample household.

# Conclusion, and Questions for the Committee

EIA takes very seriously the ever-increasing problem of nonresponse and
is determined to do all that we can to try to counteract it. The
procedures discussed above represent a concerted effort on our part to
address this issue. We are open to any suggestions on this issue, and
would like to hear Committee suggestions on how we could improve upon or
expand them, or on additional procedures we could consider.