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###### Department of Commerce

                    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                           ( print page 38168)                        Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. chapter 35).                

*Agency:*                     U.S. Census Bureau.                

*Title:*                     2010 Dress Rehearsal of the Redesigned Survey of Income & Program Participation.                

*Form Number(s):*                     SIPP 2010DR105(L) Director's Letter; SIPP/CAPI Automated Instrument.                

*OMB Control Number:*                     None.                

*Type of Request:*                     New collection.                

*Burden Hours:*                     5,376.                

*Number of Respondents:*                     10,752.                

*Average Hours Per Response:*                     30 minutes.                

*Needs and Uses:*                     The U.S. Census Bureau requests authorization from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to conduct the 2010 dress rehearsal for the Re-engineered Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).                

The Census Bureau's SIPP CAPI interview will use an event history calendar (EHC) interviewing method and a 12-month, calendar-year reference period in place of the current SIPP questionnaire approach with a sliding 4-month reference period. The Census Bureau is re-engineering the SIPP to accomplish several goals including improving the collection instrument and processing system, development of the EHC, use of the administrative records data, and increased stakeholder interaction.

The SIPP represents a source of information for a wide variety of separate topics to be integrated to form a single and unified database in order to examine the interaction between tax, transfer, and other government and private policies. Government domestic policy formulators depend heavily upon the SIPP information to determine the effect of tax and transfer programs on the distribution of income received directly as money or indirectly as in-kind benefits. They also need improved and expanded data on the income and general economic and financial situation of the U.S. population. The SIPP has provided these kinds of data on a continuing basis since 1983, by measuring levels of economic well-being and changes in these levels over time.

The main objective of the SIPP has been to provide accurate and comprehensive information about the income and program participation of individuals and households in the United States. The survey's mission is to provide a nationally representative sample for evaluating: (1) Annual and sub-annual income dynamics, (2) movements into and out of government transfer programs, (3) family and social context of individuals and households, and (4) interactions among these items. The re-engineering of SIPP pursues these objectives in the context of several goals—cost reduction and improved accuracy, relevance, timeliness, reduced burden on respondents, and accessibility. The Re-engineered SIPP will collect detailed information on cash and non-cash income (including participation in government transfer programs) one time per year. A major use of the SIPP has been to evaluate the use of and eligibility for government programs and to analyze the impacts of options for modifying them.

A key component of the re-engineering process involves the proposed shift from the every-four-month data collection schedule of traditional SIPP to an annual data collection schedule for the re-engineered survey. To accomplish this shift with minimal impact on data quality, the Census Bureau proposes employing the use of an event history calendar (EHC) to gather SIPP data. The Re-engineered SIPP will interview respondents in one year intervals, collecting data for the previous calendar year as the reference period. The content of the Re-engineered SIPP will combine the content of the 2008 Panel SIPP core as well as selected topical module questions. The Re-engineered SIPP will not contain free-standing topical modules. The EHC will allow recording dates of events and spells of coverage and should provide monthly transitions of program receipt and coverage, labor force transitions, health insurance transitions, and others. The 2010 Re-engineered SIPP dress rehearsal will also involve recording a small number of the field interviews for research purposes. Recorded verbal consent will be obtained during the interview prior to recording.

The 2010 Re-engineered SIPP dress rehearsal will be conducted from January 2010 to March 2010. Approximately 8,000 households are selected for the 2010 Re-engineered SIPP dress rehearsal, of which, 5,120 households are expected to be interviewed. We estimate that each household contains 2.1 people aged 15 and above, yielding approximately 10,752 person-level interviews in the dress rehearsal. Interviews take 30 minutes on average. The total annual burden for the 2010 Re-engineered SIPP dress rehearsal interviews will be 5,376 hours in FY 2010.

The EHC methodology is intended to help respondents recall information in a more natural “autobiographical” manner by using life events as triggers to other economic events. For example, a residence can change and in many cases occurs contemporaneously with a change in employment. The entire process of compiling the calendar focuses, by its nature, on consistency and sequential order of events, and attempts to correct for otherwise missing data. For example, if the respondents are unemployed, they may then look for a job, and then become employed.

The 2010 dress rehearsal instrument will be evaluated in several domains including field implementation issues and data comparability vis-à-vis SIPP 2008 and administrative records. Distributional characteristics such as the percent of persons with TANF, Food Stamps, Medicare, who are working, who are enrolled in school, or who have health insurance coverage from the EHC will be compared to the same distributions from 2008 SIPP Panel. The primary focus will be to demonstrate to data users that the new instrument yields data for low-income programs that are of sufficient quality. The field test sample is focused in low income areas in order to increase the “hit rate” of households likely to participate in government programs. In general, there are two ways we will evaluate data quality:

                    (1) We will compare monthly estimates from the field test to estimates from parallel sample areas in the 2008 SIPP panel for characteristics such as participation in Food Stamps, TANF, SSI, WIC, and Medicaid. To the extent those estimates are reasonably aligned with each other, we can assume that data quality is reasonably comparable. Misalignment of the estimates, and especially misalignment in the direction of the EHC estimates being consistently lower than the SIPP estimates, would be worrisome, because it would be suggestive of (                    *not*                     definitive evidence of) reduced data quality in the EHC.                

(2) For a small subset of characteristics, and for a subset of sample areas, we will have access to administrative record data. These data will permit a more objective data quality assessment.

Results from both the 2010 dress rehearsal and the 2008 SIPP Panel will be used to inform final decisions regarding the design, content, and implementation of the re-engineered SIPP for production beginning in 2013.

*Affected Public:*                     Individuals or households.                

*Frequency:*                     One time.                

*Respondent's Obligation:*                     Voluntary.                

*Legal Authority:*                     Title 13 U.S.C. Section 182.                

*OMB Desk Officer:*                     Brian Harris-Kojetin, (202) 395-7314.                          ( print page 38169)    

                    Copies of the above information collection proposal can be obtained by calling or writing Diana Hynek, Departmental Paperwork Clearance Officer, (202) 482-0266, Department of Commerce, Room 7845, 14th and Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20230 (or via the Internet at                     *dhynek@doc.gov*).                

                    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 e-mail (                    *bharrisk@omb.eop.gov*).                

Dated: July 27, 2009.

Glenna Mickelson,

Management Analyst, Office of the Chief Information Officer.

[FR Doc. E9-18206 Filed 7-30-09; 8:45 am]

BILLING CODE 3510-07-P