CIRCUMSTANCES MAKING COLLECTION OF INFORMATION NECESSARY
On September 11, 1993, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12862, “Setting Customer Service Standards,” which clearly defined his vision that the federal agencies will put the public first. To accomplish this, President Clinton called for a “revolution within the Federal government to change the way it does business.” He expected this process to require continual reform of government practices and operations to the end that, “when dealing with the Federal agencies, all people receive service that matches or exceeds the best service available in the private sector.”
Section 1(b) of this E.O. requires agencies to “survey customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction with existing services” and Section 1(a) requires agencies to “survey front-line employees on barriers to, and ideas for, matching the best in business.” These Presidential requirements established an ongoing need for the National Science Foundation (NSF) to engage in an interactive process of collecting information and using it to improve program services and processes.
The Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) is the federal statistical agency within NSF. As such, SRS compiles, analyzes, and disseminates quantitative information about domestic and international resources devoted to science and engineering. Nearly all of this information is available on the Web at www.nsf.gov/statistics in the form of publications, public use files, and databases. SRS is in the process of reviewing and evaluating the way it disseminates information. As part of that evaluation, SRS would like to build a profile of SRS customers, that is, what sectors do SRS customers come from and what products are they using, and to gauge their satisfaction with these products, including the organization of information on the Web and the availability of different formats.
The Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council proposes to convene an expert panel to review the communication and dissemination of NSF statistical information on science and engineering to data users. The panel will focus on how SRS fulfills this function through its website, information products, database retrieval system, and other such tools. SRS will present results from the survey as part of this panel review in October 2010.
HOW, BY WHOM, AND PURPOSE FOR WHICH INFORMATION IS TO BE USED
Design and Implementation
The survey will be created in SurveyMonkey, a simple but flexible Web-based survey tool. A link will be provided to the survey which will be hosted on Survey Monkey’s servers. SurveyMonkey allows for branching, which will be used to minimize response burden when applicable.
SRS staff, including the publications, Web, and statistical staffs, have developed a short (9 to 12 questions depending upon the skip pattern) survey related to different aspects of the Web customer experience. The questions are loosely based on questions used by the Department of Education at www.ED.gov and modified to meet SRS’s particular needs. The survey will be pre-tested with individuals in the division and will be modified as needed after an initial fielding of one week.
The survey will be available to SRS web customers via a link from the SRS home page. SRS will initially provide the link for a period of 6 weeks. After the first week, the responses will be analyzed to determine if changes need to be made to any of the questions.
In addition, SRS will send an e-mail to a sample of 1,000 subscribers to GovDelivery receiving publications electronically from SRS. SRS currently has approximately 13,500 GovDelivery subscribers. The e-mail will contain a link to the survey and a request to provide feedback to SRS. Depending upon the number of completed surveys, SRS may send an email to another sample of 1,000 GovDelivery subscribers midway through the intended data collection period.
Data from the survey will used to improve the types of products SRS offers, the format of those products, and the organization of the SRS website.
See Attachment 1 for a draft of the questionnaire.
USE OF AUTOMATION
A link will be placed on the SRS website that will allow users to select participation in the survey. When a user clicks on the link, they will be redirected outside of the NSF servers/website and to the SurveyMonkey website. The official NSF exit page will be used to indicate that they are departing the NSF site and going to an external website.
EFFORTS TO IDENTIFY DUPLICATION
Although several other federal statistical agencies collect data regarding their customers and products, each of those collections is specific to the agency. This collection is similar, but it is aimed specifically at SRS Web customers.
SMALL BUSINESS CONSIDERATIONS
Not applicable.
CONSEQUENCES OF LESS FREQUENT COLLECTION
Not applicable.
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES FOR COLLECTION
Not applicable.
FEDERAL REGISTER NOTICE.
The agency’s notices, as required by 5 CFR 1320.8(d), were published in the Federal Register on January 22, 2008, at 73 FR 3756 and March 29, 2008 at 73 FR 16725 and no comments were received.
OUTSIDE CONSULTATION
No formal outside consultation was used.
GIFTS OR REMUNERATION
Not applicable.
CONFIDENTIALITY PROVIDED TO RESPONDENTS
No identifiable information is being collected from respondents. SRS will have no way to link responses to respondents.
QUESTIONS OF A SENSITIVE NATURE
No questions of a sensitive nature will be asked.
ESTIMATE OF BURDEN
Each panel of the survey takes 5 minutes or less to complete. SRS Web customers who elect not to take the survey may simply elect not to click the link or to delete the e-mail containing the link, taking less than one minute of time to do this. SRS estimates a total burden of 5 minutes times 450 completed responses plus 1 minute times 2,000 refusals for a total of 71 burden hours for 6 weeks in the field.
ANNUALIZED COST TO RESPONDENTS
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the ‘earnings averaged $19.29 per hour in June 2006 for civilian workers in the United States. Average hourly earnings were lower for private industry workers ($18.56) than for State and local government workers ($23.99).” (http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl0910.pdf)
To estimate the annualized cost to respondents, SRS will assume that the average hourly earnings for SRS Web users is $25.00. Thus, the estimated cost to respondents is 71 hours times $25.00 per hour equal to $1,775 for the SRS web customer survey.
CAPITAL/STARTUP COSTS
Not applicable.
ANNUALIZED COST TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
SRS estimates the following annualized costs to the federal government:
25 hours of professional staff time to develop and test the survey
15 hours of programming time to program and test the survey
10 hours of professional staff time to analyze and report the survey results
Using the 2010 OPM Salary Tables, SRS assumes an average hourly earnings of $40.58 for staff involved (GS 14, step 1) (http://www.opm.gov/oca/10tables/pdf/gs_h.pdf), for an estimated cost of 50 hours times $40.58 per hour equal to $2,029.
CHANGES IN BURDEN
Not applicable.
PUBLICATION OF COLLECTION
Not applicable.
SEEKING APPROVAL TO NOT DISPLAY OMB EXPIRATION DATE
Not applicable.
EXCEPTION(S) TO THE CERTIFICATION STATEMENT (19) ON OMB 83-I
There are no exceptions.
STATISTICAL METHODS
Not applicable.
Attachments
Attachment 1
Survey Title: SRS Web customer Satisfaction Survey
Introduction: Please answer a few short questions and tell us how we did today. Your feedback will help us improve how we provide information online. Thanks!
Questionnaire:
Which one best describes your role in visiting the site today?
Policy maker or legislator (including staff)
Researcher or analyst
Writer or reporter
Information scientist or librarian
Administrator or executive
Teacher
Student
Member of the public
Other:________________________________
What is the one thing you most wanted to find today?
Something general on science, engineering, or technology
Something on a specific topic
A publication or document I knew about
Survey data
A graphic or figure I knew about
Grant application
Job information
Not sure/Just exploring
Other:________________________________
Did you find what you were looking for?
Yes
Part of it
No
I’m still looking (Skip respondent to Question 5)
Other: ______________________________
How hard was it, or is it, to find what you want?
Very difficult
Difficult
Neither difficult nor easy
Easy
Very easy
Can’t say
Other: ______________________
How often do you visit nsf.gov/statistics?
First-time visitor
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Less than once a month
It depends
Other: __________________________
How satisfied are you with the usefulness of our statistics?
Very satisfied
Satisfied
Both satisfied and dissatisfied
Dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
No opinion/Unsure
Other: _______________________
Checkpoint 1:
IF Q2=4 (looking for data) and Q3=1or 2 (Found it or part of it) ; otherwise skip to Checkpoint 2
Will you be able to use these data as formatted (without converting them to another format)?
Yes
No
Not sure
Other: ____________________________
If available, what data format do you prefer?
Excel
CSV
HTML
Tool to create my own table or chart
Any of these
Other:________________________________
Checkpoint 2:
If Q2=3 (looking for a publication) and Q3= 1 or 2 (found it), continue; otherwise, skip to Checkpoint 3.
Which one best describes the type of publication you wanted to find today?
Info brief or other short report with data and analysis
Special report with extensive data and analysis
Detailed statistical tables (DSTs) including notes
Other:________________________________
Which one best describes how you plan to read it?
Look at website online
Look at downloaded file online
Print out HTML
Print out PDF
Other:__________________________________
Would something else be better? _____________________________________
Checkpoint 3:
If Q2=3 (looking for a figure or graphic) and Q3= 1 or 2 (found it), continue; otherwise, skip to Wrap-Up.
How likely is it that you will have to convert theses figures to a different format?
Very likely
Somewhat likely
Not very likely
Not sure
Other: ___________________________
If available, which format would you prefer for these figures?
GIF
JPEG
PowerPoint
Any of these
Depends on how I will use it
Other: __________________________________
Wrap-up
How helpful are the categories and subcategories on the home page?
Very helpful
Moderately helpful
Somewhat helpful
Not very helpful
No opinion/Not sure
Other: __________________________
Overall, how easy or difficult is it to use nsf.gov/statistics compared to other federal government web sites?
Very difficult
Difficult
Neither easy nor difficult
Easy
Very easy
I don’t know yet
Other: ______________________________
Is there anything you’d like to tell us about your experience? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you!
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | SUPPORTING STATEMENT |
| Author | JFELDMAN |
| Last Modified By | MARK A. PLIMPTON |
| File Modified | 2010-08-25 |
| File Created | 2010-08-25 |