A STUDY OF PEACE CORPS DECLINATIONS REPORT ON METHODS A report of the respondents, instruments, and procedures used in a survey of acceptors and decliners. Prepared for the Peace Corps by David G. Bowers and Stanley E. Seashore of the Survey Research Center, The University of Michigan, under Contract PC - (W) - 219. December, 1963
Introduction This report describes the procedures, respondents, and instruments used in an interview survey of a sample of persons who accepted or declined appointments to the Peace Corps during August and September, 1963. The study was conducted in two phases; an initial scouting and planning phase was followed by a national sample survey of respondents to Peace Corps invitations. The first, or scouting, phase took place during May and June, 1963; the second, survey phase followed during July-November, 1963. Phase I Respondents to be interviewed during the first phase of the study were selected solely on a basis of proximity to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the* project staff is located. Peace Corps records for a period of over one year were searched for the names of persons whose addresses, current at the time of offer of appointment, indicated that they resided in the southern Michigan or northwestern Ohio areas. Of 35 names provided in these areas, 19 were located, contacted, and interviewed. The remainder were no longer known at the addresses listed, were out of town on extended trips, or had moved to distant parts of the country. I t was clear from this experience that only very current lists could be relied upon to provide a sample in any way representative in a larger study. The interview procedure was unstructured: nothing more formal than a listing of areas to be generally probed was prepared by way of in strumentation of this first phase of the project. Interviews were taperecorded in their entirety, after a prior assurance of confidentiality by the staff member conducting the interview.
Material collected during this first phase of the study was completely transcribed, and copies of protocols of each interview, with sufficient name and place changes to conceal the identity of the respondents, were provided to the Peace Corps. These protocols, together with a summary of the findings and a list of testable propositions, constituted the product of the preliminary phase. Phase I I Selection of Respondents For the second, or sample survey, phase, a systematic sampling procedure was adopted, designed to make the study as representative as possible and to assure that the method could be replicated, i f desired, at some future time. Several decisions about the base population to be studied were made at the outset of this second phase of the study. First, i t was concluded from experience during the initial phase that defining the population as consisting of all persons who had received offers of appointment during the two year history of the Peace Corps and attempting to locate a sample of such persons would be both costly and probably unsuccessful. Applicants are, for the most part, too young and mobile to permit much success in locating them after a number of months have passed. Second, i t was generally agreed that the primary interest of the Peace Corps lies in persons currently applyings i f these persons do not differ from those who applied earlier, then no harm is done by sampling from the current, more readily located appointees. If differences do exist, interest is in the current group, not in the group which applied
4 'V. 1. -3- in past months. I t was decided, therefore, that we should consider as our base population those persons currently applying and being processed. Third, since the second phase was to be conducted during the late summer and early f a l l, defining the sample as consisting of "current applicants" would include much of the year's total flow of appointees. It's during this season that most processing and appointment activity occurs. Selection of the sample from among this group would permit inclusion of a sizeable proportion of those persons applying and offered appointments in 1963. Fourth, i t was recognized that the passage of time may tend to distort the feelings, perceptions, and recall of appointees. For this reason interviewing in close proximity to the appointment offer itself should help underwrite the validity of the study. In line with this, the Peace Corps arranged for the project staff to be provided with listings of acceptances and declinations received daily between August 1 and September 30. Using a national highway atlas, potential respondents were accepted in the order of their appearance on these lists, provided they were within 80 road miles of the location of one of the Survey Research Center's Primary Sampling Units.* Acceptors and decliners of offered appointments were sampled separately, and, using the criteria of selection mentioned, the slightly greater flow of acceptors led to that list's being completed first. It was necessary, in other words, * Primary Sampling Units are geographic subdivisions, generally counties, chosen in combinations designed to constitute a representative sample of the national population. Each unit is staffed with interviewers on call for projects requiring a national sample.
to continue selecting for an additional few days from lists of decliners, since fewer of them within an 80 mile radius were available each day. Strictly speaking, i t is difficult to generalize beyond the group tapped at that time in selecting subjects--those accepting or declining in August and September, 1963--since the applicant population is probably in some state of continual flux. On the other hand, i t is reasonable to assume that the August and September applicant population is very similar to that in the recent past and that to be received in the near future. One further qualification was made, to enhance the validity of the results; because applicants who accepted and already have entered training have received considerable information and experienced a great deal more involvement than those acceptors who have not yet entered training, i t was decided to exclude all of the former from the sample. Of slightly over 600 names received and checked for distance from Primary Sampling Units, 392 were selected and presented to the Center's Field Office for transmittal to the interviewing staff. Of these, 300--by coincidence exactly the number established in advance as the approximate number to be included in the sample--were actually contacted and interviewed. Table 1 presents a breakdown of the cases not interviewed,,
Table 1 Reasons for Interviews not Taken Contacted, but not interviewed Contact made with family, but R unavailable 5 Contact made with R, but no interview (didn't keep appointment, too busy, etc.) 11 Refusal 1_ Total Contacted, but Not Interviewed 17 Not Contacted Moved, left no forwarding address 16 Moved, left, forwarding address, but outside a Primary Sampling Unit 20 " Moved, second address available from Peace Corps, but outside PSU 2_ Total Not Contacted 38 Already in training, disqualified for survey 37 Total Interviews Not Taken 92
These data indicate that, of the 92 not interviewed, 37 were already in training and should not have been included in the list of names submitted to the field. In addition, 22 persons were actually at an address different from the address used in locating them, and the new address placed them outside of the 80-mile limit. Fifty-nine persons, therefore, were, from the outset of the study, incorrectly included in the list submitted to the field. Reducing the total number submitted by this amount indicates that 300 were contacted out of 333 legitimately sent out, or 90 per cent success ratio. Only one outright refusal was encountered, whereas 11 persons were contacted but not interviewed, either because they did not keep an appointment made for the interview or because they gave an excuse suggesting some resistance, such as being "too busy." Instruments For this second phase a formal interview schedule, with a supplementary self-report questionnaire, was designed, pre-tested, and revised for final use. The following content areas were covered; (a) Reasons for application (h) Problems created by acceptance (b) Background information (i) Time allowance (c) Information flow about Peace Corps service (j) Changes in life situation (d) Opinions of others (k) Reasons for acceptance or declination (e) Perceptions of conditions overseas (f) Motivations of applicants (g) Detailed information about appointments offered (1) Opinion of the Peace Corps and its management
-6- Approximately 80 complex items of information were collected from respondents in interviews requiring one hour to one hour and a half. Respondents were assured that the Survey Research Center, as a research organization, had no interest in assessing individual cases, that all interviews would be held in strictest confidence, and that results would i be presented in tabular form, combining the responses of a great number of individuals. Most interviews, according to the interviewers, were conducted without any other person from the respondent's home present. Most respondents were quite interested in the interview and very cooperative. Copies of the interview schedule, self-report questionnaire, and interviewer's instructions have been presented to the Peace Corps and can be obtained for review either from that agency or from the project staff. Field Procedures For each person selected for the sample, a name and address label was typed by a member of the project staff and transmitted to the field interviewer nearest the respondent,, Mailings of these selected names and addresses were made in five "waves" between August 15 and September 30. Upon receipt of a name in his area, a field interviewer immediately telephoned the person at the address and number indicated and attempted to set an appointment for an interview. If the subject had moved to a new address within 80 road miles of the interviewer's location, the latter simply tried to contact the former there. If the
-7- subject had moved to a location more distant than 80 miles, the interviewer returned the name to the Field Office in Ann Arbor for reassignment to another interviewer or replacement by another name drawn from the next list. Completed interviews were returned to the project staff, who then transmitted them to the coding, keypunching, and analysis operations At the cut-off time for field operations, there were 151 acceptors and 149 decliners in the final sample. Analysis Procedures Material obtained in the national survey was coded by trained content analysts from the staff of the Center's coding section. For each interview, 295 measurements were obtained, with an average error rate (determined by a "check" recading of a sample of interviews) of 5.48 per interview, or slightly less than two per cent error per interview. Codes written in advance of the coding operation were supplemented with additional response categories where necessary, A copy of the coding instruc tions, complete with these modifications, has been supplied to the Peace Corps. After the coding operation, in which descriptive statements were translated into numerical indices and scale ratings, cards were keypunched and accumulated. Using a program written for this purpose, tables for each coded question were printed out by electronic computer. This tabular report presents the number of persons and percentage of acceptors or
of decliners who responded in a particular way to a particular question and indicates as well those differences which are large enough to be meaningful. Copies of this tabular report have been supplied to the Peace Corps. In addition, an interpretive report which summarizes, describes and discusses the differences and similarities obtained for the two group was prepared and supplied to the Peace Corps.