REMOTE PHONE SURVEY PROTOCOlS
Youth providers are allowed to contact clients with whom they have an active relationship to inform them of the Youth Count surveying over the course of the last 10 days in January. Providers can encourage young people to come into their access center to complete a survey and receive a gift card (if eligible). Young people can also complete an enumeration survey remotely via the phone and receive a gift card via mail or pick it up at the agency. Deduplication is conducted so that any youth who completes a phone-based survey and an in-person based survey will not be double-counted. Protocol for completing remote enumeration survey via the phone:
A designated staff at the organization will identify a contact list of clients that currently receive services at their site who are likely eligible for the unsheltered youth enumeration survey.
Staff will reach out to client via phone call or text (or whatever preferred method they use to communicate with their client to schedule remote services) to tell them about the youth count survey.
Text/text/email: “Hello, for the next 10 days (1/21/2022 to 1/31/2022) we are conducting the Homeless Youth Count surveys. If you are eligible for a survey you will receive a $10 target gift card for compensation. The survey takes less than 5 minutes and is anonymous. You can do it at the access center during these dates and times or remotely over the phone. Would you like to come in or we can we get on the phone to determine if you are eligible?”
Note: if a young person chooses to do a survey over the phone, make sure to clarify that physical gift cards will be available via mail or need to be picked up at the organization.
All remote surveys must be conducted by an interviewer over the phone. Once on phone, staff will conduct the enumeration survey following the same protocols as an in-person survey (i.e. pre-survey -> eligibility -> enumeration survey). All answers will be recorded by staff on the ESRI app.
Surveys will be considered a Remote Survey Site survey and connected to the census tract in which the site is located. Within the pre-survey, staff will select that it is a phone survey.
Pre-survey perception questions: if staff is familiar with the client, it is appropriate for them record their perceptions of the clients age, race, etc. If this does not feel appropriate, interviewer would select “cannot identify.”
Some questions are potentially sensitive to disclose. For sensitive questions (transgender identification, sexual orientation), the interviewer can read answer responses with corresponding option number and ask for young person to respond by just stating the number.
Interviewer, “Please let me know what option number is correct. Gay – one, straight – two, lesbian – three, bisexual – four, unsure/questions – five, declined or don’t know”
Respondent, “Two.”
After a young person completes a survey, staff will input gift card (last 6 digits) information into survey.
Young person will provide their information to staff to receive a gift card via mail.
If a young person doesn’t have a consistent mailing address the gift card or would prefer to pick it up the gift card can be set aside somewhere safe at the organization for the young person to pick up on their own time.
Agency staff will sign off on the gift card distribution and record reconciliation information in the Esri app. This gift card will be considered distributed, and the organization is now responsible for getting it to the young person.
Agency staff can reach out as many times as they deem appropriate to a potential young person as long as it is within the 10 days of the youth count.
The USC Survey Team will schedule a day to visit each survey site after Youth Count is finished, i.e., in early February, to conduct the longer Demographic Survey. A specific date will be scheduled for each survey site. At the end of each interview during Youth Count, the interviewer should invite (or recontact to invite) eligible young people to call or come in on that date to complete a Demographic Survey.