1513-0124 Justification

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1513-0124 JUSTIFICATION TTB F 5700.01

(03-11-09) TTB F 5700.03

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) holds an industry conference, the TTB Expo, annually to educate members of the alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and ammunition industries on matters of Federal compliance.  At the close of the event, TTB requests attendees to provide feedback on the Expo through a customer satisfaction survey (TTB F 5700.01).  Based on comments received at the FY 2008 conference, TTB added a third day to the conference and updated its offerings to include separate rooms for demonstrations and personal appointments with staff.  Also new this year is the option for attendees to print session materials in advance from our Web site, TTB.gov.  TTB updated the Expo survey form to reflect these changes, using a simple rating system to capture satisfaction.  The revised survey also consolidates several questions and minimizes the use of open-ended questions.  In the updated version, TTB also asks the respondents to make a generic self-identification that will be useful in helping to tailor the Expo schedule and educational materials in the future.  These updates reduce the time it takes each respondent to complete this survey (from 20 to 10 minutes) and reduce the burden hours (from 125 to 100), even though the estimated number of respondents and responses increased (from 375 to 600).

TTB also designed a new session-level survey (TTB F 5700.03) to determine the effectiveness of the courses offered at the event.  The survey will assist the event coordinators in designating classroom space and in scheduling the length and format of the sessions.  The survey asks for feedback on the speaker’s volume, pace, preparedness, knowledge, and level of audience interaction; and scores will be conveyed to each presenter.  For sessions with multiple presenters, the survey provides a chart whereby each speaker may be rated individually.  The survey also requests that attendees score the classroom materials, which include PowerPoints and handouts.  TTB included a comments section to capture feedback on any element not explicitly stated in the survey, and to ensure that attendees who rate any item with a score of 1 or 2 can elaborate on the reason for the poor rating.  We think that it is possible to attend 16 sessions during the 3-day EXPO and at the end of each complete this survey.  There are 600 expected respondents who will take 10 minutes to complete this survey for a total of 1,600 burden hours.

We would like to increase the number of responses and burden hours for this generic ICR.  The new survey administered at the end of each session will generate 9,600 responses (600 X 16) and 1,600 burden hours (9,600 X 10 minutes), which will take us over our present number of responses.

Our present number of OMB approved responses stands at 4,475 and burden hours stand at 2,225 before figuring in the requested increase.  We would like to increase the number of responses by 100,000 and burden hours by 50,000 and figure the new totals as stated below:

Present # of responses 4,475 Present # of Burden Hours 2,225

Increase requested 100,000 Increase requested 50,000

New total 104,475 New total 52,225