51 – Using Paradata Throughout the Survey Life Cycle for Public Sector Surveys
Using Paradata to Design the Quarterly Tax Sample
Brian Dumbacher
U.S. Census Bureau
Carma R. Hogue
U.S. Census Bureau
The Quarterly Survey of Selected Non-Property Taxes (F-73) is a sample survey conducted by the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau that collects data on local government revenue from non-property taxes. During its 2009 sample design, F-73 experienced a response rate that was lower than the U.S. Census Bureau's standard. In 2013, the Governments Division redesigned the sample and narrowed the scope of the survey from 11 taxes to three to try to reduce respondent burden, increase the response rate, and increase data quality. In this paper, we describe how paradata, which are data about the data collection process, were used in part of the sample redesign to select units with a high estimated response propensity. We also describe evaluation simulations that were performed to validate the redesign and fine-tune parameters.