PartAGallup surveySupporting statement

Contract #ED-06-CO-0023

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR REQUEST

FOR OMB APPROVAL OF

DATA COLLECTION/nEEDS ASSESSMENT

Part a

October 23, 2006

Donna Chlopak
The Gallup Organization

Submitted to:		Submitted by:
	Institute of Education Sciences U.S. Department of Education 555 New Jersey Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20208		Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning 4601 DTC Blvd., #500 Denver, CO 80237 Phone: 303-337-0990 Fax: 303-337-3005
Project Officer		Project Director:
	Sandra Garcia, Ph.D.		Louis F. Cicchinelli, Ph.D.

Justification

Circumstances that make collection of information necessary

McREL is a non-profit organization concerned with meeting the needs of America’s educators and students. To better serve their constituents, REL Central (a contract held by McREL) seeks to understand the issues that School Principals and Curriculum Coordinators feel are critical to their schools’ success.

McREL has contracted with The Gallup Organization (the contractor) to assess the current views of educators in seven states: Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. They are interested in obtaining input from both Principals and Curriculum Coordinators in order to determine the focus of their efforts to support the research and development of programs in the schools in this region.

A continuous, thorough needs assessment process is a requirement of the present REL Central (Regional Educational Laboratory of the US Department of Education) contract. The study will provide REL Central direction for its ongoing efforts.

Both Principals and Curriculum Coordinators will be asked questions about current needs and how REL Central should focus their support. Seven states were targeted with assessment covering all grade levels (pre–K/preschool, elementary, middle/junior high, high school) and various types of communities (rural, towns – large and small-, midsized cities and large cities).

Data will be analyzed to give REL Central guidance on prioritizing Fast Response Task 1.2 studies with respect to stated needs. Assessment by position — principal and superintendent will be made to determine differential needs of these groups. If other aggregations and comparisons yield distinctions in needs, these will also be pointed out in the findings — i.e. differences by state, grade level, type of community.

How, by whom, and for what purpose is the information used

This information will be used by REL Central as part of their client needs assessment, documenting various areas that Principals and Curriculum Coordinators feel are in need of support and their level of interest in the laboratory being focused on these areas.

REL Central will receive a copy of the findings to use for internal planning and program sustainability. Results will also be used to determine future program focus and offerings.

Extent of automated information collection

There is no automated information collection associated with this evaluation.

Efforts to avoid duplication

We are not aware of any other agency or organization conducting a similar needs assessment in the Central Region

Efforts to minimize the burden on small businesses

No small businesses are participating in this survey.

Impact of less frequent collection of information

Since the educational arena is dynamic and needs change, it is necessary to maintain a pulse on what Principals and Curriculum Coordinators see as needs for support. This also helps McREL focus their funding and development in the areas where clients see both a fit, with McREL’s expertise, and client need.

Special circumstances

There are no special circumstances for this data collection.

Compliance with 5 CFR 1320.8

A 60-day notice to solicit public comments was published in the Federal Register on September 26, 2006.

Payments or gifts to respondents

There are no payments or gifts to respondents.

1.Assurance of privacy

Responses to this data collection will be used only for statistical purposes. The reports prepared for this study will summarize findings across the sample and will not associate responses with a specific district or individual. We will not provide information that identifies any person or district to anyone outside the study team, except required by law.

Justification for data collection of a sensitive nature

This is a survey of educational support needs. There are no potentially sensitive items being asked in this questionnaire. However, completion of the survey is voluntary and the survey allows respondents to skip items they prefer not to answer.

Estimate of burden hours

Questionnaire Administration

Form name	Number of respondents	Number of responses per respondent	Hours per response	Response burden
Curriculum Coordinators	175	1	.25	43.75
Principals	175	1	.25	43.75
TOTAL	350	---	---	87.5

Estimate of cost burden

There is no estimated respondent cost burden for this project.

Estimate of cost to the federal government

Cost of data collection will be as follows:
Develop questionnaire and programming $13,233
Obtain lists and mail prenotification letters 4,263
Conduct telephone interviews 24,557
Prepare cross-tabulations 8,365
Submit narrative report 16,859

TOTAL $67,277

Explanation of program changes or adjustments

This is a first collection of information. This requirement, to conduct a needs assessment, is part of the new REL Central contract.

Publication of results of data collection

Plans for Publication — Combined: The contractor will write a final report based upon the requirements imposed by the contract. The report will contain background and scope, design, and methodology sections. The main body of the report will describe and interpret the key findings, which will include final analytical tables. The final section of the report will have a conclusion and report recommendations based on the survey outcomes and a section on implications of the findings for PART. A separate section (or report) will detail the findings separately for the Principal and Curriculum Coordinator groups.

The study report will be available upon request. In addition, the study results will be reported to all institutions that request a copy and individual results will be sent to each participating institution.

Plans for Tabulation: The first step in the data analysis process will be the determination of any needed weighting. If needed, the calculation of base sampling weights and the further adjustment of those weights to compensate for survey nonresponse and other sources of deviation from specific population totals will be done.  If needed, weighting procedures will be developed and the results of weighting procedures will be submitted for approval prior to conducting analytical runs.

When sampling weights are approved for use, the project research staff and statistical programmers will construct and check all derived measures that will serve as independent or dependent variables in the approved table shells. After review and approval of the constructed variables, the full set of tables will be generated. The contractor’s project director, chief statistician, and senior researcher assigned to the project will jointly review the tables to ensure that the resulting distributions make intuitive sense in light of the findings of prior research. Second, the contractor will identify any values that appear to be outliers, in the sense of being more extreme than initial expectations, and will re-check the code generating the composite variables and specifying the tables to ensure that no coding or syntax errors are responsible for the results.

Finally, the contractor will calculate sampling variances for all estimates in the analytical tables using formulas and statistical routines that are appropriate for the complex sample design. Standard analysis packages like SPSS and SAS typically assume that tabular survey data have been generated from simple random samples.

Once thoroughly reviewed and revised as necessary, the analytical tables will be converted from raw statistical output to a format that will be easy for reviewers to read and interpret. This will include incorporating long titles for tables and full descriptive names for all variables and classification categories. Variable construction and table generation will be done using SPSS software.

Exhibit 1: Scheduling of Tasks

Develop draft survey instrument	Completed
Finalize survey instrument	Completed
OMB Clearance Package submitted	In progress
Receive OMB clearance	In progress
Begin data collection	January 2007
Analyze data	March 2007
Produce data tables	March 2007
Draft report on study results	April 2007
Final report	April 2007

OMB approval for not displaying OMB date

The OMB approval expiration date will be given to all survey respondents for all surveys.

Exceptions to the certificate statement

There are no exceptions to the certification statement.

Supporting Statement/McREL Study/Part A Page 6