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Bureau of Labor Statistics > Office of Survey Methods Research > Publications > Browse Research Papers

Report on Findings from Contact Experiments from the First CPS Field Test

Erica Yu, Robin Kaplan, and Douglas Williams

Abstract

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly household survey sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and administered by the U.S. Census Bureau. The CPS provides a wide range of information about employment, unemployment, hours of work, earnings, and people not in the labor force of non-institutionalized U.S. residents age 15 or older (U.S. Census Bureau & Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). Following years of increasing costs and declining response rates, the CPS is transitioning from interviewer administration to mixed-mode administration, including a web response mode. In 2025, the agencies conducted a field test of a mixed mode design, including a self-administered web mode option for completing the CPS. The primary purpose of this test was to assess the feasibility of the web mode and understand the respondent experience in the web mode.

Research was conducted to develop a contact strategy that optimizes the tradeoff between cost and response in the unique context of the CPS – specifically a short 10-day collection period. In one experiment, we tested the effect of sending a postal reminder on web response rates. In a second experiment, we tested the effect of sending emails, varying the timing and frequency, on web response rates. Both the postal reminder and the additional emails had similar effects: both had a nominal effect on increasing response via the web mode. However, this did not increase overall response, rather shifted some from interviewer administration to the web mode.