Dear Fellow American:

I am writing to ask you to participate in a survey about consumer finances. The results of the survey will fill a gap in our knowledge about the financial circumstances of different types of households. Our previous surveys, which date back to 1962, have helped the Federal Reserve and other parts of the government make policy decisions and have also supported a wide variety of basic research.

Within the next few months, a specially trained interviewer from NORC, a social science research organization at the University of Chicago acting on our behalf, will contact you to request an appointment for an interview. Participation in the survey is strictly voluntary, but I urge you to take part.

You have been randomly selected for this survey. This random process is based on a scientific sampling methodology that allows a relatively small number of families to represent all types of families in the nation. While this design minimizes the number of people that we need to survey, it also makes it all the more important to obtain accurate information from those households that participate in the survey. Your answers are critical to making our survey data representative.

I assure you that we give the highest priority to guarding the privacy of the survey participants and the confidentiality of their answers. Your name will never be associated with the answers you provide. In fact, neither I nor anyone else at the Federal Reserve is allowed to know your name. All identifying information generated during the survey will be promptly destroyed at the conclusion of the work. We will use the answers provided by participants only for statistical purposes, and we will not release information in a form that could be used to personally identify a participant.

The interviewer who contacts you can tell you more about the ways in which participants’ answers will be used and our stringent methods for protecting your privacy. Also, you can review some key results of the 2004 survey that were published in the Federal Reserve Bulletin, available on the Federal Reserve’s website at http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf(444 KB PDF).

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in our efforts.

Sincerely,