OMB Cover Ltr OCCAM Funding Survey #2

DATE: September 18, 2006

TO: Office of Management and Budget

THRU: Project Clearance Officer, DHHS

Project Clearance Officer, NIH

Project Clearance Liaison, NCI

FROM: Nina Goodman, Project Officer

National Cancer Institute

Operations Research Office

SUBJ: Pretesting/Formative Research for NCI Communications Messages

(OMB No. 0925-0046; Expiration Date 10/31/06)

In accordance with the terms of the 3-year extension granted by OMB to the NCI Office of Communications on October 30, 2003, requiring that we submit individual collections to OMB as they are implemented, I have electronically attached a copy of a web-based survey (tracking # 0925-0046-22) to be sent to members of non-government organizations that offer funding for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) cancer research in order to assess their communication channels and funding mechanisms so that NCI can increase the quality of cancer CAM research supported by the NCI.

The goal of this follow-up survey is to collect information that will allow the NCI Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) to assess how organizations external to the Federal government offer funding for cancer CAM research, as well as develop a directory of these types of non-governmental organizations that offer funding for cancer CAM research. The OCCAM initially conducted a similar funding survey in Spring 2006 under OMB #0925-0046-15.

From previous research, OCCAM has learned that one of the hurdles that many cancer CAM researchers encounter is the difficulty of obtaining research funding for foundational or exploratory research. Often, researchers must obtain their initial funding through non-Federal sources, so that they can demonstrate proof of concept, which can be a pre-condition of obtaining Federal funds. The information that will be collected from this research will provide OCCAM with an understanding of how non-Federal funding sources operate, with hopes to share this information with cancer CAM researchers so that they can better target the funding sources that are most closely aligned with their research objectives.

The attached survey will be administered online (via an email invitation) to approximately 120 individuals that represent the various funding organizations (as described above) by sending a link to potential respondents. Respondents who did not reply to the initial survey invitation sent earlier this year will be asked to reply. In addition, any respondents who did fill out the previous survey will be invited to update their responses.

The total respondent burden for this effort, based on an average, pilot-tested administration time of 15 minutes and 90 respondents, is approximately 22.5 hours. This effort will account for 1.1 percent of the total annual burden hours (2010) granted in our extension package.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Nina Goodman, MHS