0930-0197 OAS-Justification

Customer Satisfaction Survey for

The Office of Applied Studies (OAS)

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

A. Product/Activity to be Assessed:

OAS is the primary source of information on the prevalence and incidence of substance abuse and mental health problems in the United States and the characteristics of those who suffer from these problems. SAMHSA’s OAS is also the national source of information on the location, organization, and capacity of providers that offer services to prevent and treat substance abuse, including the cost, quality, and effectiveness of the services of these providers. OAS collects, analyzes, and disseminates critical public health data to assist policymakers, providers, and patients in making informed decisions regarding the prevention and treatment of mental and substance use disorders. OAS manages three national data activities:

• National Survey on Drug Use and Health – prevalence, correlates, and consequences of use

• Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) – emergency room and medical examiner data

• Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS) – treatment facilities, admissions, and discharges

The provision and coordination of these services entail frequent interaction with non-Federal customers. OAS desires to assess how well staff members are meeting our non-Federal customers’ requests and needs in the service areas identified below:

-- The administration of all aspects of OAS data requests.

-- The provision of leadership, guidance, and technical expertise for OAS’s information technology program, such as the OAS Web site and related links.

While we have conducted a customer satisfaction survey of our publications, there have been no prior efforts to assess customer satisfaction in all these service areas.

B. Brief statement of objectives of the proposed customer satisfaction effort, including specific identification of who will use the resulting information and how they will use it:

The purpose of the customer satisfaction survey is to solicit feedback and suggestions on how to improve the quality and efficiency of OAS services. In keeping with the notion of creating a customer-focused and customer-driven organization, the objectives of the proposed customer satisfaction survey effort are:

--- to find out how well OAS staff are presently meeting customers’ needs;

-- to determine if OAS employees need additional training on how to understand and be actively responsive to customers’ requests;

-- to make each OAS employee more aware of the importance of continuously seeking to improve the quality of both the programs and services we provide; and

-- to cause OAS staff to examine and perhaps to decide that some refocusing of our internal structure may be in order so as to help create an Office that functions more serviceably, efficiently, and economically.

A management analyst will be designated to analyze survey responses. That individual will compile quantitative and qualitative data from the responses. The quantitative analyses will include frequency and percentage distributions of ratings. These will be provided for all types of services combined and will also be broken down by type of service (e.g., reports, data tables, web information, public use files, etc.)

A quarterly report will be provided to Anna Marsh, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Applied Studies/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, that will include tables of quantitative data and a narrative that highlights important quantitative findings and analyses of qualitative data, such as suggestions for improving service. Below are samples of a table shell (bar graph).

Overall Satisfaction for All Services:

	Very Satisfied	Satisfied	Dissatisfied	Very Dissatisfied
Percent (N= )	20	65	10	5

Ratings: Responsiveness, Courtesy, Quality, Efficiency, Follow-through/Follow-up. There will also be a bar graph for each of these categories (example below).

Responsiveness:

	Excellent	Good	Fair N/A	Poor
Percent (N = )	45	35	15	5

The OAS Director will work through the four other OAS supervisors to give feedback from the survey results to OAS staff members. Staff may also work together to determine how to enhance those strengths identified by the survey and conversely how to overcome or improve identified weaknesses. Should systemic changes need to be made due to the survey results, the OAS Director will work with OAS Senior Staff, in consultation with other SAMHSA Senior Staff, to design any appropriate changes.

C. Overview of methods to be used to collect the information:

All non-Federal recipients of outgoing e-mails from OAS staff will have the opportunity to click on a hot link embedded at the end of each outgoing e-mail and will be invited to

provide feedback on the sender’s customer service by completing the Customer Satisfaction Survey. The hot link will be introduced with the following message: “We value your feedback. We invite you to participate in a brief customer satisfaction survey. It averages 4 minutes to complete at the following link. Thank you in advance for your feedback.”

The Customer Satisfaction Survey will be available to all non-Federal customers receiving e-mails from OAS staff. Because of the nature of the survey, we anticipate receiving a response rate of approximately two (2) percent. There are no plans for follow-up to those who choose not to respond.

The responses of those who choose to take part in the survey will go from the respondent via the Web directly to a database file. The Web site will keep no record of where the responses came from, thereby maintaining the confidentiality of customers who do not self-disclose. Additionally, name, phone number and organization are designated as optional information on the survey.

D. Annual response burden estimate:

Both Federal and non-Federal customers use OAS services. However, the numbers below are based on non-Federal customers. Non-Federal recipients of e-mails containing the link to the Customer Satisfaction Survey have an estimated average salary of $60,000. The draft customer satisfaction survey was given to less than nine non-Federal respondents to provide feedback on the usefulness of the questionnaire and the time to complete. Respondents averaged approximately 4 minutes.

(1) 150 respondents annually x 4 minutes = approximately 10 hours yearly.

(2) 10 hours x $30.00 per hr. = $300.00 yearly.

(3) This will involve no startup or operational/maintenance costs to respondents.

Respondents	# of respondents	# responses/ respondent	Hours/ response	Total burden hours	Hourly wage rate ($)	Total cost/ year ($)
Non-Federal Customers	150	1	.067	10	$30	300.00

E. Methods used to develop and test the questions (attach a copy of the questionnaire):

The OAS Director and the four OAS supervisors have tailored and refined a survey that was used by another component within the Department of Health and Human Services that has a similar mission to OAS in that they provide services to a large variety of non-Federal customers.

The proposed survey questionnaire was shared with eight non-Federal customers of OAS services. These representatives were asked for their review and comment. All of the comments received were favorable, and no changes were suggested.

A management analyst will analyze and compile frequency and percentage distributions.

Quantitative and qualitative data will be compiled and reported monthly to Anna Marsh,

Ph.D., Acting Director of the Office of Applied Studies.

As we are not certain which types of services will elicit the most responses, at this point we are asking an open-ended question about which services were received. An OAS management analyst will review the types of services mentioned, and group them by OAS Division for the purposes of analysis. Finer analysis of a particular service provided by a Division may also be possible, depending on the number of responses about that particular service.

We anticipate that analysis of these responses will permit us to develop a list of the most frequently mentioned services. We could then provide that checklist to respondents in future versions of the questionnaire so the respondent could then select the type of service received.

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