[Federal Register Volume 59, Number 93 (Monday, May 16, 1994)]
[Unknown Section]
[Page 0]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 94-11836]


[[Page Unknown]]

[Federal Register: May 16, 1994]


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DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Office of Administration
[Docket No. N-94-3767]

 

Submission of Proposed Information Collection to OMB

AGENCY: Office of Administration, HUD.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The proposed information collection requirement described 
below has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 
for expedited review, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act. The 
Department is soliciting public comments on the subject proposal.

DATES: Comments due date: May 23, 1994.

ADDRESSES: Interested persons are invited to submit comments regarding 
this proposal. Comments must be received within seven (7) working days 
from the date of this Notice. Comments should refer to the proposal by 
name and should be sent to: Josephe F. Lackey, Jr., OMB Desk Officer, 
Office of Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, 
Washington, DC 20503.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Kay F. Weaver, Reports Management Officer, Department of Housing and 
Urban Development, 451 7th Street, SW., Washington, DC 20410, telephone 
no. (202) 708-0050. This is not a toll-free number. Copies of the 
proposed forms and other available documents submitted to OMB may be 
obtained from Ms. Weaver.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This Notice informs the public that the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development has submitted to OMB, for 
expedited processing, and information collection package with respect 
to the Public Housing Residents Anti-crime Survey. HUD is requesting a 
7-day OMB review of this information collection.
    HUD is currently implementing Operation Safe Home, a joint anti-
crime effort with the U.S. Departments of Justice, Treasury, and the 
Office of National Drug Control, to eliminate criminal activity in 
public housing. A key component of Safe Home is coordinated strikes by 
Federal agencies against drug-related crime in public housing. 
Predatory violent crime in public housing also has been targeted for 
action. In an effort to make Operation Safe Home as effective as 
possible and to guide HUD's policy and legislative agenda, the 
Secretary wants to survey public housing residents on their opinions 
regarding crime and associated problems.
    These survey data will be used directly by the Office of Public and 
Indian Housing to strengthen HUD's crime prevention activities in 
public housing and by the Office of Policy Development and Research to 
enhance HUD's policy and legislative initiatives for crime prevention 
in a broad range of other settings as well.
    The Department has submitted the proposal for the collection of 
information, as described below, to OMB for review, as required by the 
Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. chapter 35):
    (1) The title of the information collection proposal;
    (2) The office of the agency to collect the information;
    (3) The description of the need for the information and its 
proposed use;
    (4) The agency form number, if applicable;
    (5) What members of the public will be affected by the proposal;
    (6) How frequently information submission will be required;
    (7) An estimate of the total number of hours needed to prepare the 
information submission including numbers of respondents, frequency of 
response, and hours of response;
    (8) Whether the proposal is new or an extension, reinstatement, or 
revision of an information collection requirement; and
    (9) The names and telephone numbers of an agency official familiar 
with the proposal and of the OMB Desk Officer for the Department.

    Authority: Section 3507 of the paperwork Reduction Act, 44 
U.S.C. 3507; Section 7(d) of the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development Act, 42 U.S.C. 3535(d).

    Dated: May 3, 1994.
Michael A. Stegman,
Assistant Secretary, Office of Policy Development and Research.

Submission of Proposed Information Collection to OMB

    Proposal: Public Housing Residents Anti-Crime Survey.
    Office: Policy Development and Research.
    Description of the Need for the Information and its Proposed Use: 
The survey is needed so that HUD can poll public housing residents on 
their opinion regarding crime prevention activities in public housing. 
The information will be used to strengthen HUD's crime prevention 
activities in public housing and to ensure client feedback is 
incorporated into their design.
    Form Number: None.
    Respondents: Individuals or Households.
    Frequency of Submission: One Time.
    Reporting Burden: 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                           Frequency                            
                                                          No. of      x       of        x  Hours per  =   Burden
                                                       respondents         response        response       hours 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Survey...............................................         2,500                1             .08         200
Interviews...........................................         1,500                1             .42         633
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Total Estimated Burden Hours: 833.
    Status: New.
    Contact: Donald S. Bradley, HUD, (202) 708-4504, Joseph F. Lackey, 
Jr., OMB, (202) 395-7316.

    Date: May 3, 1994.

Information for Inclusion, OMB Clearance Package, Public Housing 
Residents Anti-Crime Survey Sponsored by U.S. Department of Housing and 
Urban Development, Conducted by Research Triangle Institute

Section A: Justification

A.1  Circumstances That Make Information Collection Necessary

    The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is 
currently implementing Operation Safe Home, a joint anti-crime effort 
with the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Treasury, and 
the Office of National Drug Control, to eliminate criminal activity in 
public housing. A key component of Safe Home is coordinated strikes by 
federal agencies against drug-related crime in public housing. 
Predatory violent crime in public housing also has been targeted for 
action. In an effort to make Operation Safe Home as effective as 
possible, the Secretary wants to survey public housing residents on 
their opinions regarding crime and associated problems.

A.2  Use and Users of Information--Overview of Data Requirements

    These survey data will be used directly by the Office of Public and 
Indian Housing (PIH) to strengthen HUD's crime prevention activities in 
public housing and by the Office of Policy Development and Research 
(PD&R) to enhance HUD's policy and legislative initiatives for crime 
prevention in a broad range of other settings as well.

A.3  Consideration of the Use of Improved Information Technology

    The survey is utilizing several technological approaches to create 
an innovative way to efficiently gather information from a population 
in which data collection has traditionally been difficult. We are 
creating the sampling frame for the telephone interviews by obtaining 
recent telephone numbers for the sample or addresses, using a 
commercial file matching service. The phone numbers obtained will be 
loaded into an electronic scheduler which will assign cases to 
interviews at times which maximize the probability of successful 
contact. The scheduling algorithm considers time zones, time and result 
of previous efforts, and the most appropriate time to make calls to 
residences, as well as handling specific call-back appointments.
    Once contact has been made with an eligible residence, and an 
eligible respondent selected, the Computer Assisted Telephone Interview 
(CATI) program will guide the interviewer through the questionnaire. 
Respondent burden is reduced since CATI selects the correct question 
sequence based on the respondent's previous answers allowing the 
interviewer to concentrate on reading the question and entering the 
response, not searching for the correct next question. CATI requires 
the entry of consistent data which falls into appropriate ranges thus 
eliminating editing time while the respondent is on the phone or 
callbacks to resolve problems. The CATI program can also offer the 
opportunity of providing the questions and response categories in an 
alternate language, if needed to allow special population to 
participate fully.

A.4  Efforts to Identify Duplication

    The Department has examined existing administrative data sources to 
determine if similar data are collected. The information that this 
survey seeks to gather is not available from existing administrative or 
other survey instruments. This is the first telephone survey of its 
kind to focus on public housing residents.

A.5  Why Similar, Already Available Data Cannot Be Used

    There does not exist a source of data on the attitudes of public 
housing residents toward crime/crime prevention issues equivalent to 
what is being collected in this effort. The Department regularly 
collects information (such as income and number of dependents) on 
residents of low-income public housing developments for use in 
administering low-income housing programs but does not collect 
information on resident's perceptions of crime and safety, and their 
opinions of programs that could effectively address these issues.

A.6  Reducing the Burden

    The only burden associated with this survey is the 25 minute 
interview which respondents agree to complete. As discussed in Item 
A.3, the use of CATI minimizes the burden associated with the mode of 
administration.

A.7  Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

    Since this is a one-time data collection effort, this section is 
not applicable.

A.8  Special Circumstances Requiring Inconsistency With 5CFR1320.6

    All data collection procedures and data collection instruments have 
been designed in a manner which is in compliance with all sections of 5 
CFR 1320.6. No exceptions are requested.

A.9  Consultations With Persons Outside the Agency

    The survey design and the data collection instrument have been 
designed by project staff at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) 
working under contract from HUD to design and completer the survey. RTI 
staff and their consultant, Dr. William Rohe from the University of 
North Carolina, have worked closely with the HUD project staff to 
develop the questionnaire and the sampling approach which will be used 
with standard telephone data collection procedures to complete the 
survey. During the questionnaire design, RTI methodologists consulted 
with the staff from the Census Bureau on issues of question wording and 
ordering.

A.10  Confidentiality

    During an introduction to the interview which address the 
components of informed consent, all respondents will be assured that 
the information that they provide will remain confidential, and that 
they can refuse to answer any individual question during the interview. 
No names are requested and the address and telephone numbers will not 
be included in the data file prepared and delivered to HUD. Any 
location information used in the analyses will be presented in 
composite form which will not allow the identification of individual 
respondents.
    All project staff and each telephone interviewer will comply with 
all aspects of relevant federal regulations concerning privacy of 
respondent's data, and the data will be maintained in limited access 
secured computer files.

A.11  Justification for Questions of a Sensitive Nature

    During their cognitive and telephone pretest interviews, we 
attempted to identify questions which the respondents might consider 
sensitive. None of the respondents indicated any problems with the 
questions in the questionnaire. We did replace a household income 
question with a proxy measure, monthly rent, which we felt would be 
less intrusive.

A.12  Estimates of Cost

    The cost of the survey design, data collection, and analysis and 
reporting contract to RTI is $142,401.

A.13  Estimates of Respondents

    The sample will consist of 2,500 telephone numbers which will be 
screened to determine eligibility, defined as a working residential 
number at the address determined for the sample. These screening calls 
will require an average of 5 minutes. The interview will be completed 
for 1,500 respondents and will take, on average, 25 minutes. The total 
burden is estimated to be 833 hours.

A.14  Reasons for Change in Respondent Burden

    Since this is a one-time effort, there is no change in the 
respondent burden.

A.15  Plans for Publication and Statistical Tabulation

    RTI will prepare a databook presenting outcome variables cross-
tabulated by independent variables. A final results report will provide 
summary tables and/or graphics that present main findings and text that 
interprets and gives highlights of the main findings.

Section B: Statistical Methods of Data Collection

B.1  Sampling Method and Respondent Universe

B.1.1  Target Population and Respondent Universe
    The target population, the desired inference population, comprises 
all public housing residents in the 48 coterminous States. The 
respondent universe or study population, defined as the portion of the 
target population actually being sampled from, is essentially the 
public housing residents in the 48 States that have listed telephone 
numbers. Because of undercoverage of this list source compared to the 
target population, that is, residents with no listed telephone and some 
that are not covered by the HUD address file (the 951 data base), 
special attention is being given to the sample allocation and to the 
construction of analysis weights to improve interferences relating to 
the target population.
    The basic source of sample residents will be the HUD 951 data base, 
which is basically an address file. The approximately 300,000 addresses 
on this file represent 68 percent of the 1.3 million public housing 
units in the United States. Those not represented are the result of 
nonreporting, data errors, and indefinite addresses (rural addresses, 
etc.) provided to HUD in response to the periodic mailout to all of the 
Public Housing Authorities. The circa 300,000 records identify on the 
average about three housing units each because of a single address and 
file record representing a multi-family unit in many cases. The 
respondent universe will be developed by matching these addresses to 
telephone listings.
B.1.2  Sampling Method
    The sample public housing resident will be selected in several 
phases beginning with a proportional stratified sample of approximately 
25,000 addresses obtained from the 300,000 records on the 951 data base 
(proportional to the target population counts in 32 strata). The strata 
to be used at each phase are the cross of 4 Census Regions, 4 sizes of 
Housing Authority, and by housing for elderly versus other. The 
telephone numbers obtained from the addresses selected for matching 
will be subsampled, again using random stratified sampling with 
proportional allocation. The result will be a nearly self-weighting 
sample with respect to the target population.
    Approximately 2500 telephone numbers will be selected for fielding, 
possibly in two waves to facilitate early testing of analysis and 
weighting software and with expectation of obtaining 1500 interviews 
required for the study. Finally, any eligible individual (a resident of 
the household who is 18 years of age or older) will become the sample 
respondent.
    The sample of 1500 is expected to yield sampling errors ranging 
from about 2 to 4 percentage points for the required domain estimates 
when the estimates are near 50 percent (the domains will be 
approximately 15 percent or more of the total).

B.2  Procedures To Deal With Nonresponse

    Two categories of nonresponse are important in this survey: first, 
the undercoverage of the sampling frame and, second, the potential 
nonparticipation of those residents contacted. With regard to the 
potential for nonparticipation, we are making allowance for nonworking 
numbers, other types of loss, and approximately a 20 to 25 percent 
nonresponse by fielding 2500 numbers to obtain the required 1500 
interviews.
    To deal with potential for nonresponse and undercoverage biases, we 
are also developing analysis weights that align the final sample with 
known control totals (with regard to the design strata defined above). 
Finally, other control totals will be compared to weighted frequencies 
(based on the initial analysis weights). Additional weight adjustments 
using iterative proportional fitting will be used as needed to agree 
with other important control totals (for example, age, race, metro/
nonmetro).

B.3  Pretesting

    RTI staff conducted pretesting of the questionnaire during the 
second week of the contract. The testing included four cognitive 
interviews and eight telephone interviews with residents of public 
housing facilities in Durham, North Carolina. The four in-depth 
cognitive interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes each, including 
introductory and concluding comments. Respondents were paid $20 for 
participating in the interview. During each interview, the respondents 
listened to the survey questions and responded to each as appropriate. 
We used concurrent probing during the interview to obtain insight into 
how respondents were interpreting question wording and choosing the 
best response option. In addition, we asked respondents to comment on 
what we felt were the most sensitive items (for example, the gun 
ownership and income questions) in order to determine the likelihood 
that respondents would provide valid responses.
    We also conducted 8 telephone interviews to determine if there were 
any additional changes to the questionnaire that were needed due to the 
mode of administration. All respondents were paid $10 for completing 
the interview. These calls averaged about 25 minutes each. Three of 
these interviews were conducted by project survey specialists and 
methodologists. The remaining interviews were conducted by RTI 
Telephone Survey Unit (TSU) supervisors, and were monitored by one of 
the project survey specialists. After each of these interviews, the 
interviewer completed a debriefing form with the respondent and then 
answered a similar set of items gauging his or her perception of how 
well the questionnaire worked.
    Based on these pretest interviews, we prepared a series of 
recommendations which were faxed to HUD and used as the basis of a 
series of discussions of potential revisions. The revisions which were 
agreed upon were included in the final version of the questionnaire, 
which is included in Section B5.

B.4  Persons Responsible for Statistical Aspects of the Design

    Staff at RTI responsible for the statistical aspects of the design 
include:

Project Statistician--Steve Williams, (919) 541-6246
Task Manager--Harvey Zelon, (919) 541-5888
Policy Analyst--Sam Leaman, (919) 541-6682

    Staff at HUD involved in the design include:

Project GTR--Don Bradley, (202) 708-4504
Sampling Staff--Lynn Rodgers, (202) 708-2031

B.5  Copy of the Survey Instrument

    A copy to the current version of the survey instrument is attached 
as Appendix A. The following table indicates the questions associated 
with the analysis domains.

Screening questions used to verify the        S1-S4                     
 household and identify an eligible sample                              
 member.                                                                
Background/demographic questions used to      1, 2, 40-47               
 characterize the respondent and his/her                                
 living situation.                                                      
Level of fear of crime and perception of      3, 4                      
 safety.                                                                
Attitudes toward police role in the public    5, 6                      
 housing neighborhood.                                                  
Existence of and attitudes toward citizen     7-11, 25-27               
 involvement in crime prevention activities.                            
Perception of perpetrators of crime.........  12, 14, 17                
6-month history of victimization............  13, 15, 16                
Perception of developmental characteristics.  18, 24, 31, 37-39         
Perceived efficacy of crime-reduction         19-23, 28-36              
 measures.                                                              
                                                                        


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Appendix A--Survey Instrument

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[FR Doc. 94-11836 Filed 5-13-94; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4210-01-C