Development of the Federal Statistical System Public Opinion Survey
Jennifer Hunter Childs
U.S. Census Bureau
Shelly Wilkie Martinez
Office of Management and Budget
Laura Rasmussen
IRS
Stephanie Willson
National Center for Health Statistics
Monica Wroblewski
IRS
The U.S. Census Bureau is collaborating with other federal statistical agencies to understand public trust in official statistics in the United States. Over the next two years, this interagency group is commissioning a public opinion survey of attitudes toward statistics produced by the federal government. The study looks at trust in the federal statistical system, the credibility of federal statistics, and attitudes toward and knowledge of statistical uses of administrative records. The research follows similar efforts in European countries that have traced public views of official statistics. The design of the study will also allow us to make comparisons between attitudes observed in the U.S. and those measured in Europe and observe how current events correlate with public perception towards the federal statistical system. This paper describes the development and cognitive testing of the questionnaire employed to measure trust in official statistics in the U.S. Results preliminary information about the structure of public opinion towards these topics in the U.S. and informed the selection of questions for a field pretest.
