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Measuring the Effects of EPA Compliance Assistance in the Auto Body Sector

The primary goal of this evaluation is to understand the contribution of EPA's Compliance Assistance (CA) effort to improved environmental management and environmental benefits and to establish a statistically valid design methodology that will allow statistical estimation of this impact.  This evaluation focused on supporting EPA compliance assistance efforts to: (1) implement an outcome measurement pilot for compliance assistance activities conducted in Fiscal Year 2009/2010 that uses statistically valid methods and an OMB-approved ICR for data collection; (2) investigate through a comprehensive literature review analysis, the nature and extent of any correlation between compliance assistance (CA) activities and changes in recipient behavior (i.e., improved environmental management practices and reduction/elimination/treatment of pollution); and (3) develop and refine an evaluation methodology that has transferable elements so that future, routine CA activities may be measured and evaluated using statistically-valid methodologies but with less complexity and required resources than the pilot (e.g., transferable data collection methods and survey questions). The evaluation assessed the combined effectiveness of those activities, the validity of using a telephone survey to replace site visits, and the relative contributions of each assistance activity on compliance rates.

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