[Federal Register Volume 72, Number 232 (Tuesday, December 4, 2007)]
[Notices]
[Pages 68171-68174]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E7-23401]


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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Coast Guard

[USCG-2007-28578]


Collection of Information Under Review by Office of Management 
and Budget: OMB Control Number: 1625-0089

AGENCY: Coast Guard, DHS.

ACTION: Thirty-day notice requesting comments.

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SUMMARY: In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this 
request for comments announces that the U.S. Coast Guard is forwarding 
one Information Collection Request (ICR), abstracted below, to the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) requesting re-instatement, with change, of 
a previously-approved collection of information: 1625-0089, National 
Recreation Boating Survey. Our ICR describes the information we seek to 
collect from the public. Review and comments by OIRA ensure we only 
impose paperwork burdens commensurate with our performance of duties.

DATES: Please submit comments on or before January 3, 2008.

ADDRESSES: To make sure your comments and related material do not enter 
the Coast Guard docket [USCG-2007-29070] or are received by OIRA more 
than once, please submit them by only one of the following means:
    (1) Electronic submission. (a) To Coast Guard docket at http://www.regulations.gov.
    (b) To OIRA by e-mail to: [email protected].
    (2) Mail or Hand delivery. (a) To Docket Management Facility (M-
30), U.S. Department of Transportation, West Building Ground Floor, 
Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20590-0001. 
Hand deliver between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through 
Friday, except Federal holidays. The telephone number is 202-366-9329.
    (b) To OIRA, 725 17th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20503, to the 
attention of the Desk Officer for the Coast Guard.
    (3) Fax. (a) To Docket Management Facility at 202-493-2251.
    (b) To OIRA at 202-395-6566. To ensure your comments are received 
in time, mark the fax to the attention of Mr. Nathan Lesser, Desk 
officer for the Coast Guard.
    The Docket Management Facility maintains the public docket for this 
notice. Comments and material received from the public, as well as 
documents mentioned in this notice as being available in the docket, 
will become part of this docket and will be available for inspection or 
copying at room W12-140 on the West Building Ground Floor, 1200 New 
Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday 
through Friday, except Federal holidays. You may also find this docket 
on the Internet at http://www.regulations.gov.
    A copy of the complete ICR is available through this docket on the 
Internet at http://www.regulations.gov. Additionally, copies are 
available from Commandant (CG-611), U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, 
(Attn: Mr. Arthur Requina), 2100 2nd Street, SW., Washington, DC 20593-
0001. The telephone number is (202) 475-3523.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Arthur Requina, Office of 
Information Management, telephone (202) 475-3523 or fax (202) 475-3929, 
for questions on these documents. Contact Ms. Renee V. Wright, Program 
Manager, Docket Operations, (202) 366-9826, for questions on the 
docket.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
    The Coast Guard invites comments on the proposed collection of 
information to determine if it is necessary in the proper performance 
of Departmental functions. In particular, the Coast Guard would 
appreciate comments addressing: (1) The practical utility of the 
collection; (2) the accuracy of the estimated burden of the collection;
    (3) ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of 
information subject to the collection; and (4) ways to minimize the 
burden of collection on respondents, including the use of automated 
collection techniques or other forms of information technology.
    Comments to the FDMS or OIRA must contain the OMB Control Number of 
the ICR addressed. Comments must contain the docket number of this 
request, [USCG 2007-28578]. For your comments to OIRA to be considered, 
it is best if they are received on or before the January 3, 2008.

[[Page 68172]]

    Public participation and request for comments: We encourage you to 
respond to this request by submitting comments and related materials. 
We will post all comments received, without change, to http://www.regulations.gov. They will include any personal information you 
provide. We have an agreement with DOT to use their Docket Management 
Facility. Please see the paragraph on DOT's ``Privacy Act Policy'' 
below.
    Submitting comments: If you submit a comment, please include the 
docket number [USCG-2007-28578], indicate the specific section of the 
document to which each comment applies, providing a reason for each 
comment. We recommend you include your name, mailing address, and an e-
mail address or other contact information in the body of your document 
to ensure you can be identified as the submitter. This also allows us 
to contact you in the event further information is needed or if there 
are questions. For example, if we cannot read your submission. You may 
submit your comments and material by electronic means, mail, fax, or 
delivery to the Docket Management Facility at the address under 
ADDRESSES; but please submit them by only one means. If you submit them 
by mail or delivery, submit them in an unbound format, no larger than 
8\1/2\ by 11 inches, suitable for copying and electronic filing. If you 
submit them by mail and would like to know that they reached the 
Facility, please enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard or 
envelope. We will consider all comments and material received during 
the comment period. We may change the documents supporting this 
collection of information or even the underlying requirements in view 
of them.
    Viewing comments and documents: Go to http://www.regulations.gov to 
view documents mentioned in this notice as being available in the 
docket. Click on ``Search for Dockets,'' and enter the docket number 
(USCG-2007-28578) in the Docket ID box, and click enter. You may also 
visit the Docket Management Facility in room W12-140 on the West 
Building Ground Floor, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC, 
between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal 
holidays.
    Privacy Act: Anyone can search the electronic form of all comments 
received in dockets by the name of the individual submitting the 
comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an 
association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review the Privacy 
Act Statement of DOT in the Federal Register published on April 11, 
2000 (65 FR 19477), or you may visit http://DocketsInfo.dot.gov.

Previous Request for Comments

    This request provides a 30-day comment period required by OIRA. The 
Coast Guard has published the 60-day notice (72 FR 38839, July 16, 
2007) required by 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2). That notice elicited 12 
comments.
    The Coast Guard issued an OMB Information Collection supporting 
statement for its National Recreational Boating Survey for public 
comment on July 16, 2007. The proposed information collection 
activities are based on recommendations from a Scientific Advisory 
Committee (SAC) as well as a Collaboratory of Partners (COP), two 
groups that a grant recipient and the Coast Guard put in place to 
assist with the development of the National Recreational Boating 
Survey. The SAC was a group of methodologists whose role was to design 
the survey. The COP, on the other hand, was a collaboration involving 
groups such as various government agencies, boater associations, and 
the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. The 
primary responsibility of the COP was to help Coast Guard define the 
content of its survey questionnaires.
    We reviewed each of the comments received with diligence, and made 
some changes to our survey and its supporting statement where it was 
deemed appropriate. The present document provides a summary of public 
comments, our responses thereto, and changes made to the survey and its 
supporting statement.

1. General Supportive Comments

    Several comments in support of the National Recreational Boating 
Survey indicated it has been substantially revised to reflect the need 
for more targeted data in response to the elements included in the 
National Recreational Boating Safety (RBS) Program's Strategic Plan, 
which calls for collection of participation/exposure data to develop 
reliable national/state-level measures of risk incidental to 
recreational boating. In fact, valid comparisons of injury or fatality 
rates across states or other geographic entities, which have always 
been of interest, require the use of participation/exposure data as a 
common base for calculating rates' denominators. This survey will make 
exposure data available to the boating community, in addition to 
collecting various other boating participation data broken down by boat 
type and length.

2. Weighting of Survey Data

    One commenter, while supporting the proposed survey process and the 
idea of conducting it more frequently, indicated the suggested fixed 
number of 400 per state would not yield valid national estimates. The 
commenter's rationale is that the number of boats varies considerably 
per state, and some sort of data weighting is warranted. Another 
commenter pointed out the lack of discussion about weighting matters. 
We do not intend to obtain a fixed predetermined number of 400 
respondents per state. Our intention is to obtain approximately 30,000 
respondents from the mail survey of registered boat owners, and 20,000 
respondents from the Random Digit Dialing (RDD) data collection 
targeting households that do not own a registered recreational vessel. 
Each of these surveys is based on stratified samples, with proportional 
allocation as described in the supporting statement for this survey. We 
agree with the commenter that the survey must be weighted to account 
for differential selection probabilities. We added an entire section in 
the supporting statement that provides a detailed description of the 
weighting process.

3. General Survey Design

    One commenter expressed a concern that we did not adopt a rotating 
panel design for our National Recreational Boating Survey. The 
commenter stated the Coast Guard should justify its proposed continued 
use of an ``antiquated'' cross-sectional survey approach, which he 
feels will prevent the agency from obtaining useful and actionable data 
on net changes in how individuals alter their boating-related 
behaviors. Further, he opined that it will only allow for the 
estimation of gross flows (or changes).
    We disagree with the commenter that cross-sectional surveys provide 
estimates of ``gross'' changes and not estimates of ``net''. The cross-
sectional surveys we are planning will provide estimates of ``net'' 
changes needed to observe trends, and not ``gross'' estimates. A 
``net'' change represents, for example, the difference in overall 
boating participation levels between two years (years 1 and 2); while a 
``gross'' change quantifies specific movements of year 1 boaters (e.g. 
those who stopped this activity in year 2). Consequently, obtaining 
``gross'' change estimates requires tracking of individual level 
adjustments over time, which has traditionally been achieved with panel 
surveys. States may conduct local panel studies to further look into 
the ``net''

[[Page 68173]]

changes revealed by Coast Guard's National Recreational Boating Survey. 
The use of a rotating panel design is primarily justified if a key 
objective of the survey program is to provide reliable information on 
``gross'' as well as ``net'' changes. That is not the case with the 
National Recreational Boating Survey. Nevertheless, we added a section 
in the supporting statement that discusses the issue of change 
estimation to provide a better justification of the proposed design.

4. Dual-Frame Issues

    One commenter raised a concern about the use of the dual-frame 
approach, and how sample data collected by telephone will be compared 
to or combined with the mail survey data. The commenter would like us 
to explain the handling of the overlap between the two approaches and 
justify the use of two sampling frames.
    In states that will provide boat registration data, we will 
implement a dual-frame survey with two separate components:
     The first component is a mail survey of households with a 
member who owns a registered recreational vessel.
     The second component is an RDD survey of boating 
households with no registered recreational vessel owner.
    The mail survey using registration data is an effective way to 
collect the desired boating data with the possibility of targeting 
users of a particular type of watercraft. However, users of 
unregistered vessels constitute a significant portion of the boating 
population. Although some unregistered vessel users and owners are in 
households that also own registered vessels and are therefore included 
in the mail survey target population, a sizeable number are believed to 
reside without owning any registered recreational vessel. Since the 
mail survey does not cover households that do not own a registered 
vessel, an RDD household survey must be conducted to target them. The 
RDD sample will be screened, and a sufficiently large sample of boating 
households with no registered boat will be interviewed. It is a well 
known fact that the dual-frame approach can be highly efficient for 
surveying rare populations. For example, obtaining statistics on 
personal watercrafts could be difficult if one has to rely solely on a 
random national sample of households. Using the state boat registration 
data, one can target specific boats more effectively. As far as 
combining data from the mail and RDD surveys is concerned, we will 
weight the units of analysis from each component independently and 
obtain national/state level estimates by calculating the sums.
    In states that will not provide boat registration data, the 
National Recreational Boating Survey will be based exclusively on an 
RDD sample; households, boats, and boaters will be weighted 
accordingly. National-level estimates will be obtained by summing all 
corresponding state-level estimates.

5. Mail Survey's Response Rates

    A commenter indicated the projected response rate of 35 percent for 
the mail survey is unduly low and cannot be expected to yield valid 
estimates. He also stressed that some states will not provide any boat 
registration data to the Coast Guard, leading to a poor and incomplete 
sampling frame. Other concerns were also raised, ranging from not 
referencing Dr. Dillman's works on survey response rate improvement to 
failing to discuss standardization. For the 2002 National Recreational 
Boating Survey, the response rate of the mail survey was 49 percent, 
while that conducted telephonically was more than 61 percent. We 
anticipate higher response rates in 2007 due to a increased data 
collection budget, and a more systematic approach for converting non 
respondents. Our estimate of 35 percent represents the response rate 
with respect to the number of initial contacts, which include eligible 
as well as ineligible households. Survey response rates as defined by 
the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) are 
calculated with respect to the number of eligible sample units. For the 
purpose of quantifying the response burden, we used a response rate 
with respect to the initial contacts (many of which are ineligible), 
and deliberately decided to adopt a conservative approach by minimizing 
our projections. When calculated with respect to the eligible sample 
size, the response rate will be higher. Based on past experience, we 
believe the proposed approach for reducing non-response will be 
effective. Concerning the standardization of studies, we believe some 
flexibility must be given to the data collection contractor 
implementation of specific protocols to improve survey response rates, 
and, not provide very detailed specifications to achieve this goal.

6. Survey Questionnaires

     A commenter suggested the tabularized format of some 
questions may lead different survey vendors to translate questions into 
different Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) questions. When 
developing the survey questionnaires, our goal was not to write 
detailed specifications for a CATI programmer. Our primary objective 
was to provide questionnaires that are sufficiently clear for any CATI 
programmer to understand the exact nature of data items to be 
collected. Moreover, different CATI programmers may organize questions 
in different ways without it being problematic so long as the data item 
needed is properly collected.
     A commenter suggested the timeframe for collecting the 
data should be from October of the initial year to September of the 
following year, which will supposedly reduce the recall bias. We are 
not aware of any study which would support the commenter's statement.
     The commenter indicated the survey questionnaires are 
flawed based on the following issues:
     The absence of ``Don't know'' or ``Refusal'' options in 
the yes/no questions;
     The number of household members listed on the 
questionnaire; and
     The special order in which household members are listed.
    We appreciate these comments and will work with selected 
contractors to address these concerns. The proposed survey 
questionnaire is not to be seen as a detailed specification memorandum 
to be sent by mail to a CATI programmer, but, should rather be 
considered as a document that will be explained and discussed with the 
data collection contractor.
    Concerning question 5 of the screener questionnaire for states not 
sharing registration data, an answer (yes or no) is mandatory since 
that information is used to determine eligibility for the detailed 
survey. Therefore the ``Don't know'' option is unacceptable. The 
interviewer may need to talk to a more knowledgeable person if 
necessary. For those survey questions we can modify prior to selecting 
the contractor, we did so. Here are the changes:
     Concerning the collection of data on ethnicity, we have 
modified the questionnaires to comply with OMB standards.
     In the screener and detailed questionnaires, an adult is 
now defined as someone aged 16 or older. This modification was made 
following a comment by the same commenter.
     The number of home-use telephone numbers in the household 
is now collected.
     A commenter raised concerns about the pre-testing of the 
questionnaires. The National Recreational Boating Survey was last 
conducted in 2002, and many questions in the 2007

[[Page 68174]]

questionnaire were taken and thoroughly tested. The other questions in 
the 2007 questionnaire not used in the 2002 version were also used on 
several occasions by various boating researchers to collect subject 
data. The collection contractor is expected to conduct a limited pre-
test to identify possible unforeseen problems.

7. Data Analysis

    A commenter indicated that very little was said in the supporting 
statement about how the data collection contractor will analyze the 
data. In response to this comment, we expanded the data analysis 
section to show how national, state, and regional estimates will be 
calculated. However, the contractor will essentially provide the Coast 
Guard with basic contingency tables showing weighted counts describing 
various aspects of the boating population and their activities during 
2007. We may conduct further analyzes internally after receiving the 
micro-data file.

Information Collection Request

    Title: National Recreational Boating Survey.
    OMB Control Number: 1625-0089.
    Type of Request: Reinstatement, with change, of a previously 
approved collection for which approval has expired.
    Affected Public: Recreational boating participants and owners of 
recreational vessels.
    Abstract: The Federal Boat Safety Act of 1971 determined the 
framework of the Coast Guard RBS program. This program as set forth in 
46 U.S.C., Chapter 131, requires the Coast Guard to ``encourage greater 
state participation and uniformity in boating safety efforts, and 
particularly to permit the states to assume the greater share of 
boating safety education, assistance, and enforcement activities.'' See 
46 U.S.C. 13101. The Coast Guard Office of Boating Safety achieves 
these goals by providing timely and relevant information on activities 
that occur in each respective jurisdiction. The boating information 
provided by the Coast Guard enables each state agency to tailor and 
implement safety initiatives addressing specific needs of boaters in 
local jurisdictions. The primary objective of this collection is to 
provide the Coast Guard with the required information in a format 
suitable to effectively manage the program.
    Burden Estimate: This is a biennial requirement. In the year the 
survey is conducted, the burden is estimated to be 67,619 hours.

    Dated: November 26, 2007.
D.T. Glenn,
Rear Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard, Assistant Commandant for Command, 
Control, Communications, Computers and Information Technology.
[FR Doc. E7-23401 Filed 12-3-07; 8:45 am]
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