[ Main page of Report | Contents of Report ]
In this chapter we elaborate our discussion of survey data collection activities that would provide a more complete understanding of employer practices in hiring and employing TANF recipients and the role of labor market intermediaries in this process. Although this chapter focuses on one approach to conducting these surveys, we note various options that could be exercised both in developing and implementing the proposed surveys.
We divide our discussion of the survey activities into three tasks: a national survey of employers, follow-up interviews with selected employers, and a survey of the labor market intermediaries with whom employers work. For each task we describe a comprehensive survey option and a basic option that requires less financial support.
[ Go to Contents ]
Surveys of businesses and other organizations are difficult to develop and implement. The challenges faced when conducting surveys of businesses are very different from those encountered in conducting other types of surveys. In this section we briefly discuss three key challenges that should be considered when developing the surveys of employers and labor market intermediaries: sample design, survey administration, and employer-intermediary linkages.
The first and most obvious challenge in conducting surveys with employers is identifying an appropriate sample frame, or list, from which to draw the sample. Ideally, the sample frame should include all or nearly all members of the population of interest — in this case all domestic organizations with employees.(22) A survey could be limited to employers in the private sector or could include public organizations as well. Holzer's survey of employers included both groups.
Assembling a complete list of businesses is challenging. Non-government lists are generally constructed from a range of directories (e.g., phone books) and files (e.g., lists of trade organizations); government lists (such as those maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics) are generally derived from tax, unemployment insurance, or other records. Regardless of the source, it is difficult to construct and maintain an up-to-date list of all U.S. employers, and most existing lists suffer from a range of defects such as duplicate records, classification inaccuracies, incompleteness, and extraneous units (Srinath, 1987).
Developing a sample of businesses is further complicated by the difficult task of identifying the right organizational entity to which the survey should be directed. Business organizations include enterprises that consist of one or more companies, companies that consist of one or more establishments, and establishments. Employer surveys, such as Holzer's Multi-City Telephone Employer Survey (MCTES) and later four-city survey, have sampled establishments, recognizing the local nature of many businesses' employment practices. However, determining whether given business organizations are establishments, rather than enterprises or companies, can be difficult. The sample frame must be systematically "profiled" to identify and code multi-unit business organizations so that establishments may be sampled (Srinath, 1987).
Researchers typically encounter additional difficulties in their attempts to survey businesses. The difficulties include the following.
Respondent Identification. Identifying the best person(s) to complete a survey within a business organization is challenging. The information obtained from the lists typically used for sampling generally includes the company's address and telephone number and, in some cases, the name of a general contact person in the organization. Unfortunately, the identified contact is rarely the person to whom the survey should be directed — that is, the person who knows the most about entry-level worker recruitment and hiring. Moreover, elements of the survey may need to be administered to more than one person within the business organization. For example, it may be most appropriate for a person who handles recruitment to answer one survey module and another person responsible for employment and supervision to respond to a second module.
Gatekeepers and Corporate Survey Policies. In many businesses there are "gatekeepers" who screen mail and telephone requests for survey participation and prohibit access to the survey's intended respondent. In addition, organizations often have "corporate survey policies" that dictate whether and in what ways an employee may respond to a survey. Generally speaking, these policies apply to certain questionnaire methods (such as written questionnaires versus in-person interviews) and require potential respondents to obtain permission to participate in the survey from a central authority (Dillman, 2000). However, some companies have "no survey" policies that prohibit employees from participating in surveys on the company's behalf.
Incentives for Survey Participation. Surveys of business organizations often struggle to obtain meaningful response rates. Employees often are busy and may have few personal incentives to respond to a survey about employer practices (Dillman, 2000).
As discussed in previous chapters, many employers utilize labor market intermediaries in their recruitment, hiring, and employment processes. The simplest way to obtain information about the use of intermediaries is to rely entirely on information supplied either by employers in an employer survey or by intermediary organizations in a survey of labor market intermediaries. Holzer's four-city surveys in the late 1990s asked employers about the involvement of intermediaries in their employment activities. Abt Associates' surveys of intermediaries during the same period asked these organizations about the employers with whom they worked. However, neither set of surveys asked detailed questions about the interactions between employers and intermediaries.
A more demanding, but potentially very rewarding, approach would be to ask both employers and intermediaries about their interactions. Specifically, a national survey might ask employers about the intermediaries with which they have worked, and then interview the intermediaries named by employers. By doing this, the survey would provide more thorough information than is now available. This approach also would allow verification of the survey responses of both employers and intermediaries.
[ Go to Contents ]
Many of the important decisions required in designing a survey of employers are related to the interview's content. The experience of Holzer and others suggests that a telephone survey of employers should last no longer than 15-20 minutes. As a result, both the topics covered and the specific questions included in the survey would have to be limited. However, there are many high-priority subjects for the survey to address. Exhibit 5.1 presents a list of potential topics for the survey as well as examples of questions that might be asked for each of the topics. The selection of specific questions for the core survey would depend on a number of factors, including whether supplementary interviews were conducted in addition to the core survey (see discussion below).(23)
| Survey Topics | Illustrative Questions |
|---|---|
| Employer Characteristics and Circumstances | |
| Business characteristics | Does this company operate at more than one site?
Is this a minority-owned company? What percentage of your customer/clients are African American? Asian? Hispanic? |
| Workforce characteristics | How many employees currently work for the company at this location?
How many of your employees are in jobs that do not require any particular skills, education, previous training or experience when they are hired? |
| Business and employment conditions | Has the company's total revenue during the last year increased compared
to its revenue in the previous year?
Is the number of current employees greater than it was a year ago? Approximately how many entry-level vacancies are you currently trying to fill? |
| Employer Attitudes and Perceptions | |
| Interest in TANF recipients | Are you ready or reluctant to hire welfare recipients as employees?
Do you use the services of a public agency, private company, or community organization that focuses on working with welfare recipients? Would you be more likely to hire welfare recipients, especially without a high school diploma or work experience, if an agency provided a 50 percent tax credit against their wages for one year? |
| Perceptions of recipients | In general, how does the job performance of welfare recipients you have hired compare to the performance of your other entry-level employees? |
| Government supports | Do you know that tax credits for hiring welfare recipients are available from the federal government? Have you claimed such credits for employees you have hired? |
| Employer Practices | |
| Recruitment and hiring | Do you use the services of a public agency, private company, or community
organization in recruiting and hiring employees? Would you rely on one or
more organizations as a partner in finding and hiring good people?
Have you participated in a job fair or some other event sponsored by a public agency or a community organization? During the past year, have you used the Internet when trying to fill job vacancies? Do you have job applicants take any kind of tests? Which kinds of tests do you administer? Roughly what percentage of your job applications is from females? African Americans? Asians? Hispanics? |
| Compensation | Do you use the services of a public agency, private company, or community
organization in determining the wages or fringe benefits paid to employees?
What is the range of starting wages for entry-level positions? Is this figure hourly, weekly, monthly or yearly? Do you offer health insurance to entry-level employees? Is there a waiting period for health insurance eligibility? What percentage of your employees is fully enrolled? Do you offer a retirement plan? |
| Employee support and assistance | Does your company offer employees assistance in finding child care, or
with other types of assistance (e.g., housing, counseling, or transportation)?
Do you use the services of a public agency, private company, or community organization in providing assistance to employees in obtaining child care, housing, counseling, or transportation? |
| Training | Do you use the services of a public agency, private company, or community
organization in training any of your employees?
What types of training does the company provide to employees? |
| Employee performance assessment | How do you assess the performance of your employees?
Do you use the services of a public agency, private company, or community organization in assessing the performance of your employees? |
Another key decision concerns the frame of reference for the survey questions. Many of the questions in Holzer's surveys asked the respondent about the last employee hired. For example, the four-city survey asked about the type of work the last employee performed, whether the position required a high school diploma, and whether the person was first hired through a temporary employment agency. Alternatively, a survey could ask about multiple individuals hired by the employer over a longer time period. For example, the respondent could be asked about the last five to 10 employees hired by the company or about all employees hired during the last 12 months.
Holzer's approach — asking about the employer's most recent hire — has two important advantages. First, it minimizes recall error and maximizes respondent understanding by focusing unambiguously on recent experience. Second, it can be posed, using identical language, to all respondents whose companies have hired at least one person. The key disadvantage is that, particularly for larger establishments, the most recent hire may not be representative.
As for the survey's content, important decisions about the survey's sample, data collection method, survey testing and survey implementation would need to be made. In this section we review some of the issues to be considered in developing a survey with employers. Survey sampling issues-identifying the study's target population, finding or assembling a list of target population members, and actually selecting the sample-are examined first. This is followed by a discussion of survey testing and implementation issues.
Target Population. The study's target population should be defined as precisely as possible in terms of the larger population to which the survey's findings would be generalized. This requires the development of inclusion and exclusion criteria that describe the characteristics of the business organizations to be included in the survey's sample.
For a survey of employers, there are a number of possible criteria that might be used. These include the following:
Sampling Frame. As discussed above, identifying a sampling frame that provides adequate coverage of business organizations and employers poses a number of challenges. Several factors and tradeoffs should be taken into account in developing the sampling frame. For example:
Exhibit 5.2 contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of four possible sample frames: the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database; InfoUSA; Dun & Bradstreet; and business or trade organization lists. Applying the above criteria to these lists illustrates some of the choices, or tradeoffs, that would need to be made. For example, the LEHD includes comprehensive Unemployment Insurance data that has been linked to a number of other sources including the Survey of Income and Program Participation, but only covers 20 states. Alternatively, the InfoUSA list provides slightly less comprehensive coverage of employers, but is available nationwide. It also includes fields that identify establishments (versus companies or enterprises) and provides contact names for human resources personnel within the organization.
| Description | Strengths | Weaknesses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) |
|
|
|
| InfoUSA |
|
|
|
| Dun & Bradstreet |
|
|
|
| Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, or Other List Maintained by Trade Association or Business Group |
|
|
|
Sample Selection. Once a sampling frame is identified, several choices need to be made about how to actually draw the sample. First, investigators must decide what, if any, subgroups (or strata) within the target population are of particular interest. For example, to what extent is one interested in making distinctions among the following types of employers:
Additionally, investigators need to decide whether two-way strata are of interest. For example, is there interest in making comparisons among small businesses that are located in rural versus urban areas?
Based on these decisions, an appropriate sample size can be determined. The survey sample size depends on:
Surveys of employers and labor market intermediaries could be either self- or interviewer-administered. Additionally, a number of different data collection modes-mail, telephone, Internet, or in-person-could be used to collect responses. To some extent, the data collection method is affected by the sampling frame and design. For example, it is difficult to conduct a mail survey without up-to-date mailing addresses or a telephone survey without current telephone numbers.
Some survey methods or combinations of methods typically produce better survey response from specific populations than other methods. Mail surveys with businesses generally result in lower response rates than telephone surveys or mixed-method approaches using both a mail and telephone contact. Mail surveys, however, are generally less expensive to administer than those conducted by telephone. Holzer's MTCES and four-city surveys were administered by telephone. In contrast, Abt Associates survey with intermediary organizations utilized a mixed-method approach, with an initial mail contact followed by telephone contact with non-responders.
Development of the employer and intermediary survey instruments probably would draw heavily on two types of resources. One includes existing instruments, notably Holzer's employer surveys and Abt Associates' survey of labor market intermediaries. The other important resource includes researchers and other individuals with pertinent expertise, including employers themselves. Several members of the expert advisory panel would be valuable advisors in the questionnaire development process.
Pre-testing a survey instrument is an essential component of good survey design. Pre-testing may involve focus groups that provide additional input regarding the survey's content and format, or pilot tests where the instrument is administered to individuals who resemble or are members of the survey's target population. In the latter case, feedback may be obtained through written comments or debriefing interviews.
[ Go to Contents ]
In this section we outline the elements of a plan for a comprehensive survey of employers.
An overview of the survey's implementation plan is provided as Exhibit 5.3.
Exhibit 5.3
Implementation Plan for Comprehensive and Basic Surveys
The sample design for the comprehensive survey plan reflects one possible approach to identifying and selecting businesses for participation in the employer survey. The target population includes all business establishments and public agencies that have at least one employee.(24) The business establishments would be identified using the InfoUSA business directory.(25) This directory is recommended based on its national coverage, file characteristics (including flags for establishments and contact information for human resources personnel), easy access, and cost. The InfoUSA sample frame could be augmented with data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data source, which includes additional information on employer and employee characteristics for employers in more than 20 states.
The plan uses a multi-staged sampling strategy in which establishments are initially stratified in terms of three size categories: small (fewer than 20 employees), medium (20-99 employees), and large (100 or more employees). The number of establishments selected in each of these strata would be proportional to the total number of workers employed by all companies in that group. Within each establishment size stratum, four regional strata — corresponding to the four U.S. Census regions — would be established. Here, the sampling fraction would be proportional to the number of establishments for that region.
Alternatively, employers in selected sectors (e.g., service sectors) could be oversampled. Oversampling particular groups of establishments would result in more reliable specific estimates for such groups. However, it could also result in a larger sample and increased survey costs.
In his MTCES and four-city employer surveys, Holzer used these same establishment-size categories. However, these surveys did not stratify by regions. Instead, separate samples were drawn for specific cities.
Based on these design specifications, a sample of 3,000 survey completions is advisable. Because the number of TANF recipients in the general population is relatively small, a general survey of employers might find a relatively small percentage of employers — quite possibly less than 25 percent — aware that they have recruited or hired current and/or former TANF recipients. Nonetheless, a sample that includes 3,000 survey completions would permit reliable estimates of the prevalence of various employer practices.(26)
This sample would also permit extensive subgroup analysis. For example, it should be possible to make reliable estimates for business establishments in the service and manufacturing sectors as well as for establishments in the public sector. It should also be possible to make separate estimates for different regions of the country.(27)
The implementation plan for the comprehensive survey of employers is based on a four-step design, which is intended to produce an overall response rate of at least 70 percent. As summarized in Exhibit 5.3, the plan has several important features:
1. Screening Telephone Survey. An initial screening survey would be conducted with sampled establishments to verify important characteristics such as whether they are still in operation, the number of full- and part-time employees, and the name and contact information for the individual responsible for entry-level hiring. A separate screening survey improves the overall efficiency of the full telephone survey by ensuring that the interviewers target the correct person within the organization and that only eligible firms are included in the study. The screening survey would be conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and, on average, last no longer than five minutes.
2. Pre-Survey Announcement Letter. Using the contact information gathered during the initial screening survey, a pre-survey announcement letter would be sent to individuals in sampled establishments who are responsible for entry-level hiring decisions. This letter would describe the survey, its sponsors, and when and how the individual would be contacted for a telephone survey interview. Contacts also would be given the option of calling a toll-free hotline to complete a survey at their convenience, schedule an interview appointment, or ask questions about the survey. This letter would be sent approximately two weeks prior to initiating the study's telephone survey component.
3. Telephone Survey Administration. Identified respondents from the sampled establishments would be contacted by telephone to complete a survey on their practices for hiring and employing current and former TANF recipients. The length of the survey's administration would not exceed 20 minutes. CATI would be used to administer the survey and enter data, which greatly improves survey efficiency and overall data quality.
The survey questionnaire would open with a few additional screener questions to ensure that the correct contact person within the establishment has been identified. The survey also would be designed and programmed to allow for multiple respondents for cases where this is appropriate. Initially, no more than 15 attempts would be made to reach the contact person. At this juncture, survey supervisors should review the situation to determine if an alternative contact or method should be used to reach the selected establishment. In addition, approximately three weeks after beginning the telephone survey, reminder letters should be sent to all non-respondents. This letter would remind the contacts about the survey, its importance, and the options available for completing the survey.
Interviewers should be trained to work with respondents in ways that minimize survey refusals. This includes flexible interview scheduling procedures — such as the option to complete the survey over the course of more than one call, offering alternative options for completing the survey (e.g., via internet) — and addressing respondents' concerns about survey questions, content, and procedures. Some respondents can be expected to refuse the survey. In all cases, individuals who refuse the survey must be treated with respect; however, we recommend one attempt to convert the refusal.(28) Individuals who refuse would receive one conversion refusal contact from a supervisor. At this time, the supervisor would probe to determine whether it is the "establishment" that is refusing or the individual. If it is the individual, another contact within the organization would be sought. In situations where respondents indicate that they cannot participate because of company policy, survey supervisors would probe to find out whether the policy allows for mail surveys and, depending on the overall response rate, this individual might be asked to complete a mail survey at some later date.
The core survey instrument would be pre-tested with a limited sample of establishments. To the extent possible, the pre-test would reflect the actual survey circumstances, including administering the survey using CATI. The administration of this pre-test should be carefully monitored and, at the survey's conclusion, the pre-test survey respondents should be asked about their experience taking the survey. It is particularly important to identify questions that are difficult to answer and to obtain reactions to the flow and general tone of the questionnaire.
[ Go to Contents ]
The basic employer survey plan, which is less expensive than the comprehensive option, is designed to provide estimates for business establishments as a whole. The survey would be completed with 1,000 establishments, rather than the 3,000 establishments specified for the comprehensive plan. Recognizing the statistical limitations imposed by this smaller sample, the basic plan would be confined to business establishments. In addition, the basic survey's sample would only be stratified by business size; additional geographic strata would not be used.
The survey would be administered by telephone, with a completion rate of 60-65 percent. This figure, lower than the rate for the comprehensive survey, would result from fewer interview attempts per establishment. In addition, the basic survey would not include a separate survey screener. In other respects, however, the procedural features of the basic plan would closely resemble those of the comprehensive option described above (and summarized in Exhibit 5.3).
The basic plan's sample size would not be large enough to support the subgroup assessment described for the comprehensive option. This would result in a less complex analysis and a shorter report.
[ Go to Contents ]
The comprehensive and basic telephone surveys described in the preceding two sections would not be long enough to collect detailed information on employer practices. As a result, we recommend an additional round of interviews with employers. These follow-up interviews would be conducted with employers who respond to the core survey and whose responses indicate experience hiring TANF recipients. As noted earlier, it is likely that many employers will have little or no such experience.
Among businesses and public agencies with TANF hiring experience, the follow-up interviewing could be targeted to several alternative employer groups, including those with interesting or innovative practices and those indicating they have partnerships with labor market intermediaries. Further data collection for employers with noteworthy practices would focus on the details of those practices. For interviews with establishments having relationships with intermediaries, the focus would be on the employment activities involved and the extent to which company employment functions have been outsourced to these labor market organizations.
The respondent for the core employer survey would probably be a person familiar with the establishment's recruitment and hiring process. The second interview should probably be conducted with a person who is familiar with post-hiring practices. This may or may not be the same person who responds to the core survey.
For the comprehensive version of these interviews, a substantial fraction of the sample would be interviewed in person at the establishment site. This approach, which would entail semi-structured discussions with multiple respondents at each firm or organization, would provide in-depth information comparable to site visits done for case study research. Unlike most case studies, however, objective employer survey results could be used to identify the establishments with practices warranting study. In addition, geographic considerations could be used in the subsample selection process to contain costs (e.g., several establishments from each of several metropolitan areas could be chosen).
These in-depth interviews would permit a rich qualitative assessment of employer practices based on discussions with multiple respondents at each establishment. Based on the interviews, detailed descriptions of the practices would be provided in the project's final report.
The remaining follow-up interviews would be done by telephone, in most cases with a single respondent. Like the in-person interviewing, however, these telephone interviews could involve a substantial number of open-ended questions.
Conducting these follow-up interviews entirely by telephone would reduce costs substantially. The interviews would be done in the same manner as for the telephone interviews included in the comprehensive option. Most interviews would involve a single respondent.
[ Go to Contents ]
Developing a survey for labor market intermediaries would require similar choices to those faced in developing an employer survey. For example, as shown in Exhibit 5.4, there are many important topics and specific questions to cover in such a survey. However, we recommend that the survey sample frame — as well as the determination of the appropriate person in the organization to interview — be based on responses to the core employer survey. A draft of the intermediary survey would be developed at the same time as the employer surveys to ensure parallel construction. However, the final intermediary survey's content would depend to some extent on data obtained from the employer survey. As a result, the intermediary survey instrument would not be completed until after receiving final data from the employer survey.
The sample of labor market intermediaries to be surveyed by telephone would be determined by the employer survey; that is, only those intermediary organizations that are identified by employers would be included in the intermediary survey. The administration of the intermediary survey would be similar to that of the employer survey. As for the core employer survey, we would conduct an interview of no more than 20 minutes.
| Survey Topics | Illustrative Questions |
|---|---|
| Intermediary Characteristics | |
| Organizational characteristics | Does this organization operate at more than one site?Is this a for-profit,
non-profit, or government organization? Is it affiliated with another
institution?
What are the characteristics of your employee-clients (participants)? What percentage of these clients are African American? Asian? Hispanic? What are the characteristics of your employer-clients (companies)? Are they concentrated in particular industries? |
| Institutional mission | What is this organization's primary mission?
How do you measure organizational success? Is employee performance judged using these performance measures? |
| Intermediary Services | |
| Recruitment and hiring | Do you provide assistance to employer-clients in finding and recruiting
employees?
Do you offer employee screening services to employer-clients? What types of screening do you provide? Do you offer job placement services to employee-clients? |
| Employee support and assistance | Do you use /provide services to employer-clients in providing support
services or fringe benefits to their employees?
Do you offer post-placement services to employee-clients? Do you provide financial planning education? Job coaching? Child care assistance? Mentoring referrals? Counseling? Transitional health care assistance? |
| Training | Do you use /provide skills training services to employer-clients? Do
you provide GED preparation? Literacy training? Computer training? Vocational
training? Employer-specific training?
Do you offer job training to employee-clients? Do you provide job readiness training? Basic education or GED preparation? Skills training? |
For the comprehensive survey of intermediaries, many of the interviews would be conducted in person at the organization's offices. As with employers, in-person interviewing at the office of the intermediary organization would provide valuable in-depth information. In addition, it would provide an opportunity to verify and augment the information on intermediaries provided by employers.
Given the nature of these interviews, much of the development of the interview instrument would need to occur after the completion of the employer survey interviewing. Employer responses to the core survey would illuminate many of the practices and issues that are important to address in detail during the intermediary interviewing.
As with the secondary interviews with employers, conducting the survey of intermediaries by telephone would reduce costs, but also yield less detailed information. Most, but not all, of the survey's instrument development — which would be less detailed than for the in-person interviewing option — could be done before the core employer survey is finished.
[ Go to Contents ]
We estimate that a comprehensive survey of both employers and intermediaries would cost several million dollars. In addition to the comprehensive version of the core survey of employers, this project would include comprehensive follow-up interviews with employers and a comprehensive survey of intermediary organizations identified by employers in the core survey.
This project would include the following components:
The entire project would take approximately two and one-half years. This includes a 2-month period for survey design, 5-6 months for the OMB clearance process and preparation for telephone interviewing, 5 months for administration of the core employer survey (including the screener), 6-9 months for administering the core intermediary survey and completing the in-depth interviewing with employers and intermediaries, and 5-6 months for the analysis and report preparation.
Several alternative formulations of the project are available. One option is to restrict the project to a core survey of employers. The basic survey of employers only could be completed, for several thousand dollars, in less than a year's time. The comprehensive version of this survey, and accompanying analysis, could be completed for slightly over one million dollars. The cost of a survey with a sample size between 1,000 and 3,000 — which could permit a moderate amount of subgroup analysis — would fall between these two cost estimates.
An alternative approach involves modifying the comprehensive survey project outlined in the last section to include a smaller number of on-site interviews. For example, by reducing this number from 50 to 25 for both the employer and intermediary interviews, the estimated cost of the project would be substantially reduced. This would also result in a modest reduction in the time needed to complete the project.
A third option involves administering a comprehensive core survey to employers and then conducting basic versions of the secondary employer interviews and intermediary survey. This approach retains the larger employer sample, the corresponding subgroup analysis of employer practices, and the additional data collection from intermediaries, but gives up the in-depth on-site interviewing and detailed qualitative assessment of practices that goes with it. The project would require slightly less than two years to complete and cost a few million dollars.
[ Go to Contents ]
(22) As discussed below, the basic-option survey would be administered only to employers in the private sector. For the comprehensive option, however, public and nonprofit sector employers also would be included.
(23) The primary respondent for the core survey is expected to be someone familiar with the employer's recruitment and hiring process. As discussed in section 5.3, supplementary interviews might target additional respondents more familiar with other employment processes. Thus, if the supplementary interviews were done, the core survey might place a relatively greater emphasis on the recruitment and hiring questions in Exhibit 5.1.
(24) It is believed that establishments are the best primary sampling unit for this study, because many firms give considerable autonomy to their individual establishments, particularly in regard to hiring practices. However, for some firms, some or all employment practices are centrally managed.
(25) The InfoUSA database includes listings for for-profit, government/public sector, and non-profit employers.
(26) With a sample of 3,000 establishments, even if only 10 percent are aware of recruiting or hiring TANF recipients, we would be able to estimate the proportion of establishments who have TANF recruiting or hiring experience within plus or minus 1 percentage point at a 95 percent confidence level.
(27) With a subgroup sample of 500, we could estimate the percentage of establishments with TANF experience within 3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
(28) At least one "refusal conversion" attempt is an industry-standard practice when conducting telephone surveys.
Main Page of Report | Contents of Report
Home Pages:
Human Services Policy
(HSP)
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
(ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS)