Research Reports

New Roster Procedures and Probes to Improve Coverage in the Survey of Income and Program Participation

Anna Y. Chan

KEY WORDS: coverage, roster procedures, roster probes

ABSTRACT

As part of a long-term effort to improve the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) core interview, Census Bureau staff implemented numerous changes throughout the SIPP questionnaire, and evaluated those changes in a series of field experiments. One main objective identified for the demographics sections of the instrument, was to design a new roster and a new set of non-standard roster probes to collect a more complete initial roster and to capture marginal and tenuously attached household members. The intention is to improve within-household coverage for SIPP. This paper highlights the changes that will be implemented in the SIPP instrument for the 2004 SIPP Panel, summarizes the effectiveness of the new roster procedure and the probes in identifying otherwise-missed persons and discusses their likely impact on future SIPP estimates.

CITATION: Chan, Anna Y. 2003 “New Roster Procedures and Probes to Improve Coverage in the Survey of Income and Program Participation.” 2003, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association/Mira Digital Publishing, CD-ROM, pp 854-861.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Research Division

Created: June 13, 2007
Last revised: June 13, 2007