2017 • No. 17–4
Research Data Reports
The 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice: Technical Appendix 
This report serves as the technical appendix to the 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), administered by the Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). The SCPC is an annual study, created and sponsored by the Consumer Payments Research Center (CPRC) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, designed primarily to collect data on attitudes to and use of various payment instruments by consumers over the age of 18 in the United States. The main report, which introduces the survey and discusses the principal economic results, can be found at http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/cprc/SCPC. This data report details the technical aspects of the survey design, implementation, and analysis.
Key Findings
The technical appendix does the following:
- Establishes the context and goals of the survey.
- Highlights changes in the survey from the 2014 version to the 2015 version, including a change in the survey vendor that was used to recruit panel members and manage the survey for respondents used to make official population estimates.
- Details the sample selection strategy.
- Discusses survey participation and item response rates.
- Delineates the methodology used to generate the sample weights that are used to make inferences about the entire population of U.S. consumers.
- Discusses the general philosophy taken toward data preprocessing of categorical and quantitative variables and provides detailed algorithms for key data-editing procedures
- Presents the statistical methodology used for estimating and comparing population estimates.
Implications
Providing a detailed technical appendix is intended to enable users of the SCPC data and researchers who study the results and approach of the 2015 SCPC to understand the data more completely and gain a deeper understanding of the survey results.
Abstract
This document serves as the technical appendix to the 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice administered by the Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) is an annual study designed primarily to collect data on attitudes to and use of various payment instruments by consumers over the age of 18 in the United States. The main report, which introduces the survey and discusses the principal economic results, can be found at http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/cprc/SCPC. In this data report, we detail the technical aspects of the survey design, implementation, and analysis.