Voices of the Bay Supplemental and Part B questions

Supplemental Questions for DOC/NOAA Customer Survey Clearance (OMB
Control Number 0648-0342)
1. Explain who will be conducting this survey. What program office will be
conducting the survey? What services does this program provide? Who are the
customers? How are these services provided to the customer?
This survey will be conducted by educational staff at the Monterey Bay National Marine
Sanctuary through the Voices of the Bay program website
(http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education/voicesofthebay.html). Voices of the Bay is an
educational curriculum that was developed through a partnership between the Monterey
Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's (NOAA's) Offices of National Marine Sanctuaries. The website is
housed on the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries education webpage.
The webpage (program) offers visitors the ability to download the curriculum (services).
This allows teachers throughout the country and world access to the curriculum activities
for use with their students. The target customers are teachers and faculty that work with
students in grades 7 through college. The curriculum modules are available to any visitors
to the website.
2. Explain how this survey was developed. With whom did you consult during the
development of this survey on content? Statistics? What suggestions did you get
about improving the survey?
We developed this survey by determining what information would be helpful for us to
have about the visitors to our website that download the curriculum (what affiliation,
what subject they teach, how they heard about the program). We are interested in learning
how far-reaching the curriculum is (what state, or country if outside of the United States)
and potentially how many students may be exposed to the curriculum (how many
students). We designed the curriculum for students in grades 7 to community college, and
we are interested if that is the target age of the teachers that are downloading the
activities. Finally, we are committed to making our curriculum as useful for teachers as
possible and thus wanted to determine if there were other activities and/or mediums that
the visiting teachers would be interested in our providing.
The educational staff working on the Voices of the Bay project developed the survey. We
consulted with Seaberry Nachbar, who is trained in and responsible for the evaluation of
our educational programs.
We are not going to run statistical analyses on any of the questions. We are not asking
any quantitative questions about their opinion of the curriculum nor are we planning on
using the results as an indication of the population of teachers implementing the
curriculum (as some will not complete the survey and others receive the curriculum not
from the website). Therefore, we did not consult with anyone, or receive suggestions
about, statistics.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted. How will the customers be sampled (if
fewer than all customers will be surveyed)? What percentage of customers asked to
take the survey will respond? What actions are planned to increase the response
rate? (Web-based surveys are not an acceptable method of sampling a broad
population. Web-based surveys must be limited to services provided by Web.)
Visitors to the website who click on the link to download the curriculum will be directed
to the survey. They will have the option of not completing the survey and continuing on
to the curriculum documents, or they will complete the survey before continuing on to the
curriculum documents.
We will not sample visitors to the website in any other form other than this optional
survey.
We are estimating that most of the visitors (>75%) will complete the optional survey. We
anticipate a high response rate as the visitors to the site are inherently interested in the
curriculum and thus are “stakeholders” of the materials. Additionally, we tried to limit
the length of the survey to encourage a higher response rate.
The results from this survey will not be used as an evaluation of the program or
curriculum, though we will collect suggestions for directions we might pursue in future
curriculum development.
4. Describe how the results of this survey will be analyzed and used. If the customer
population is sampled, what statistical techniques will be used to generalize the
results to the entire customer population? Is this survey intended to measure a
GPRA performance measure? (If so, please include an excerpt from the appropriate
document.)
The results of this survey will be used to provide some information on the educational
demographics of visitors to the website that are downloading the curriculum (where they
are located and what age level are the intended target students). Also, we will receive
information about different paths through which visitors have heard of the Voices of the
Bay program. We hope to learn about what future curriculum directions and media forms
that these visiting teachers might be interested in receiving. We will not be analyzing the
results further.
We are not sampling the customer population, so we will not be using any inferential
statistics. This survey is intended to record supporting information about some of the
visitors to the Voices of the Bay website that choose to download the curriculum (GPRA
Output Measure) as well as gain suggestions of potential future curriculum development.

B. COLLECTIONS OF INFORMATION EMPLOYING STATISTICAL
METHODS
1. Describe (including a numerical estimate) the potential respondent universe
and any sampling or other respondent selection method to be used. Data on the
number of entities (e.g. establishments, State and local governmental units,
households, or persons) in the universe and the corresponding sample are to be
provided in tabular form. The tabulation must also include expected response
rates for the collection as a whole. If the collection has been conducted before,
provide the actual response rate achieved.
The potential respondent universe is visitors of the Voices of the Bay website that
are interested in downloading the curriculum. We anticipate that this will mostly
be formal and informal educators.
Per Year
Anticipated Response Rate
Formal Educators (K through college) : 20 75% (15)
Informal Educators: 7
75% (5)
This does not mean that 75% of visitors to the site will complete the survey, as
only visitors that choose to download the curriculum will be presented with the
optional survey. We will have a counter on the website that allows us to track how
many people download the curriculum, and thus will inform us of our true
response rate.
2. Describe the procedures for the collection, including: the statistical
methodology for stratification and sample selection; the estimation
procedure; the degree of accuracy needed for the purpose described in the
justification; any unusual problems requiring specialized sampling
procedures; and any use of periodic (less frequent than annual) data
collection cycles to reduce burden.
Answers from the survey will be collated into a database. No statistics will be
used to analyze the data. Data will be collected any time an individual chooses to
download the curriculum and chooses to complete the optional survey. The survey
will be included on the website for the next two years.
3. Describe the methods used to maximize response rates and to deal with
nonresponse. The accuracy and reliability of the information collected must
be shown to be adequate for the intended uses. For collections based on
sampling, a special justification must be provided if they will not yield
"reliable" data that can be generalized to the universe studied.
Our intent with the survey is to learn more about the visitors that are downloading
the curriculum to know if it is being used, and by whom, and where it is being
downloaded. We estimate that approximately 75% of those choosing to download
the curriculum from our site will complete the survey (as opposed to 75% of all
who are using the curriculum, including those who receive the information by

another means), as the survey is very short, and the respondents are to some
degree invested in the curriculum.
4. Describe any tests of procedures or methods to be undertaken. Tests are
encouraged as effective means to refine collections, but if ten or more test
respondents are involved OMB must give prior approval.
No tests of procedures or methods will be undertaken, as we are not trying to
gather statistical information about a sample of the population.
5. Provide the name and telephone number of individuals consulted on the
statistical aspects of the design, and the name of the agency unit,
contractor(s), grantee(s), or other person(s) who will actually collect and/or
analyze the information for the agency.
No one was consulted on the statistical aspects of the design, because we will not
be using any statistics in the synthesizing of the data. Instead, we will collect the
demographic and suggestions of future curriculum activities and media in a
database.
Kristin Hunter-Thomson, at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, along
with Valerie Thorpe, at the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, will collect the
data from the survey. Kristin Hunter-Thomson (831.420.3994) will be responsible
for transferring the data into the database and summarizing the survey results.