Questionnaire

The questionnaire used for the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, Trade Development, Tourism Industries In-Flight Survey program must receive clearance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The current OMB number is: 0625-0227. The clearance for any questionnaire may be from one to three years. The expiration date and OMB number are listed on the actual survey instrument. All federal government agencies that conduct survey research must obtain clearance from OMB to implement their survey. In the year that the clearance expires, a Federal Register Notice is issued around 120 days before the clearance date. The most recent request for comments was on November 14, 2001. Click on the Federal Register Notice link to see this Notice. Any party wishing to comment on the survey is encouraged to do so. These comments are sent to a designated federal contact. Upon closure of the 60-day comment period, the comments received are sent to the agency requesting a renewal of their clearance to conduct the survey. An OMB statistical clearance package must be developed following the OMB guidelines. All letters obtained as a result of the Federal Register Notice must be summarized and addressed. The statistical package is then submitted to OMB for clearance. The entire review and clearance process of the questionnaire by OMB takes between four and five months.

As a government survey subject to OMB clearance, TI does not have the flexibility to change it upon demand. But, TI has worked with the industry to ensure they have input on the content of the survey. The In-Flight Survey questionnaire developed in 1982 has been changed in 1985, 1990, 1993, and 1996. The survey instrument is available in 12 languages. The language versions available include: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The last three times the survey was redesigned, the travel industry has provided an increasing amount of input on the content of the questionnaire. TI plans to continue this effort of obtaining input from the private sector before making any other changes to the survey.

If you would like to see what the questionnaire looks like, copies are available for downloading by visiting our contractor's site. Once on this page, go to the Questionnaire section.