OMB Clearance Request MSURSD generic clearance request 2013

Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which covers the administration of U.S. federal student financial aid programs, Federal Student Aid (FSA) administers the following programs: Pell grants, Stafford loans, PLUS loans, and the “campus-based” programs including Federal Work Study, Perkins Loans, and Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants. Federal regulation requires schools to have written policies and procedures for the administration of the Title IV student assistance programs. To ensure institutional regulatory compliance, FSA provides training and technical assistance for financial aid administrators, institutional leaders, and other institutional support staff nationwide via its Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website and the School Experience Group (SEG). The SEG’s mission is to identify and the unique service needs of all post-secondary education institutions and provide them with tailored resources to meet those needs. Within SEG, the Minority Serving and Under Resourced Schools Division (MSURSD) is responsible for providing support, assessment, and training specifically targeted for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).

FSA is currently working to refine the Leadership and Management Seminar they conducted during the summer of 2012. This session provided institutional presidents/CEOs, financial aid directors, and other executives involved with the Title IV programs at their respective institutions with information regarding Title IV default management policies and procedures, with goals of increasing institutional Title IV compliance and growing student retention and graduation rates. Specifically for the current work, MSURSD is interested in gaining insight into how they can effectively make the following enhancements to their Seminar:

broadening the seminar’s audience to include institutional presidents/CEOs, CFOs and financial aid directors from currently non-participating MSIs and unsolicited Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs), as well as by increasing the audience from institutions who participated in the 2012 seminar;
updating the content addressed during the training session to ensure that it reflects what the target audience views as the compliance-related topics most important to their roles; and
identifying additional delivery approaches, such as the use of live and recorded webinars, that may better serve their target audience.

INTENDED PURPOSE AND NEED FOR THE COLLECTION

FSA has contracted Windwalker Corporation to enhance the reach and scope of their Leadership and Management Seminar to ensure that the training reaches the audience MSURSD serves, as well as to ensure that the seminar provides effective training to all participants. This work adds onto previous work that Windwalker conducted for FSA, which included the development of a long-term (2 year) evaluation framework and monitoring plan that can be administered to seminar participants and that provided a formal system to measure the short- and long-term effectiveness of the seminar, as well as identify areas for improvement.

This current research includes the development of a web-based survey that will be administered to a wider audience of seminar participants. FSA would like to broaden the audience who participates in the seminar to include the following groups: 1) a larger audience, including presidents/CEOs, CFOs and financial aid directors, from all institutions that were invited to participate in the last seminar, and 2) an increased number of institutions that could attend the seminar to include currently non-participating MSIs and unsolicited Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs). The survey will assess the target audience’s interest in a variety of content areas and delivery approaches, which will provide FSA with information on how to tailor their current seminar to meet the needs of the larger target audience. Further, the survey will include questions assessing the longer-term impact of the seminar for those who attended the last session held in the summer of 2012.

The web-based survey consists of 17 items to collect feedback from those who have attended the seminar in the past, as well as to measure the interest by those who have not yet participated. Specifically, the survey will collect data from presidents/CEOs, CFOs and financial aid directors on:

perceived value and utility of the seminar;
importance of various content areas to their roles;
interest in attending the seminar across different delivery approaches;
ideas regarding how to improve the seminar or make it more relevant to their work; and
likelihood to attend future seminars.

The survey is a component of a larger evaluation effort to guide SEG’s program development and enhancement of services available for MSIs. The survey instrument and email communications (described below) are provided as appendices in this document.

COLLECTION PROCEDURES

The web-based survey will be developed using SurveyMonkey, a survey platform and data analysis tool. Using this platform allows for the development of a computer-based survey of varied question types (e.g., questions using Likert scales and open-ended questions) to be administered to respondents via the delivery of a web link through an email message. Both closed- and open-ended items are included in the survey to obtain quantitative and qualitative data to aid in the effectiveness assessment of the seminar. Specifically, twelve items are close-ended and five items are open-ended. Four of the open-ended items are optional. The survey is expected to take respondents approximately 10 minutes to complete. Respondents will use radio buttons or check boxes for close-ended items to indicate their response(s), and text fields will be provided for the open-ended items. Skip logic is utilized for two questions, such that a respondent’s answer to a close-ended item will affect which follow-up open-ended item is displayed. This mixed-methods approach uses the closed-ended responses to provide quantitative information on themes already identified as seminar participation outcomes, while open-ended responses allow Windwalker to gather qualitative data, allowing for more detailed findings and the discovery of themes not represented in the closed-response items.

Once the survey is finalized and ready to deploy, FSA will provide Windwalker a list of names, email addresses, and demographic variables of interest (e.g., institution name and participant’s position title) of the audience to whom the survey link will be sent. Each participant will receive an email from an FSA point of contact via surveymonkey.com with an invitation to complete the survey. The email invitation will include details on the purpose of the survey, the anticipated length of time to complete the survey, and the survey deadline date. The survey will remain open for two full business weeks, and three reminder emails will be sent subsequent to the launch email to participants who have not yet completed the survey. The first reminder will be sent three business days after the survey launch, a second reminder will be sent seven business days after the survey launch, and a third, and final, reminder will be sent ten days after survey launch.

Once the survey has closed, Windwalker will begin data analysis. Data will be captured by the SurveyMonkey tool, allowing for download into IBM SPSS Statistics, a software package used for statistical analysis. SurveyMonkey’s text analysis software will be used to analyze the open-ended responses. Where applicable, survey data will be compared to the results from the evaluation survey data previously collected by Windwalker on behalf of FSA. Open-ended responses will be coded by theme and the frequency counts for comments by theme will be provided in a January 2014 report (see the “Planned Use of Data” section). Should the number of comments for any given open-ended response exceed SurveyMonkey’s text analysis software’s minimum threshold of 20 comments, a word cloud will be created for each open-ended survey question, providing a visual representation of the frequency of the most popular terms. All coding rubrics will be provided to FSA.

DATES, LOCATIONS, AND PARTICIPANTS

The proposed timeframe for data collection is December 9 – 20, 2013 and will be conducted entirely online. No focus groups are planned and no payments, stipends, or incentives are proposed. Windwalker will administer the survey to the population of 1,881 presidents/CEOs, financial aid directors who FSA has identified as the target audience for their Leadership and Management Seminar. This timeline meets the contractual requirement that the survey be administered and that all data be analyzed within two months after the project kick-off meeting, which was held during late October, 2013, and after OMB clearance is obtained. The survey has also been shared with MSURSD/FSA leadership for approval, and final approval has already been granted.

PLANNED USE OF DATA

The survey results will provide critical, primary information to identify ways to enhance and expand the audience of the 2012 Leadership and Management Seminar. For instance, the survey results will demonstrate the extent to which presidents/CEOs, CFOs and financial aid directors are interested in proposed seminar topics, and their likelihood to attend the seminar across different delivery formats. Where possible, findings from this survey will be compared to the data gathered from Windwalker’s earlier seminar evaluation to determine if there are gains or losses in perceived seminar utility once presidents/CEOs, financial aid directors, and other executives return to their institutions.

A report to be delivered at the beginning of January 2014 to FSA will include a summary of findings from the Leadership and Management Seminar Survey. A goal of the report is to identify what, if any, content updates and changes to the delivery approach presidents/CEOs, CFOs and financial aid directors would like to see to the seminar. Additionally, the report will measure the likelihood that specific target audiences would participate in the next seminar. Lastly, the report will also discuss the extent to which past seminar participants felt that what they learned during the last seminar was useful to their work and that they were able to retain the material in the long-term.

Open-ended responses will be coded by theme and the frequency counts for comments by theme will be provided in the January report. As previously mentioned, should the number of comments for any given open-ended response exceed SurveyMonkey’s text analysis software’s minimum threshold of 20 comments, a word cloud will be created for each open-ended survey question, providing a visual representation of the frequency of the most popular terms.

AMOUNT OF ANY PROPOSED STIPEND OR INCENTIVE

Not applicable.

BURDEN HOUR COMPUTATION (Number of responses (X) estimated response or participation time in minutes (/60) = annual burden hours):

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Presidents/CEOs, financial aid directors, and other executives	1,881	10 minutes	313.5 hours

Totals	1,881	10 minutes	313.5 hours

BURDEN COST COMPUTATION

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Hourly Rate¹	Response Time	Total
Presidents/CEOs	627	$84.88	10 minutes	$8,869.96
Financial aid directors	627	$57.91	10 minutes	$6,051.60
Other executives	627	$55.04	10 minutes	$5,751.68

Totals	1,881		10 minutes	$20,673.24

STATISTICAL INFORMATION

A census of all members of the expanded seminar audience will be used to select participants for the survey. Customer satisfaction surveys typically have a response rate of 10-15%. However, because the targeted survey respondents are presidents/CEOs, CFOs, and financial aid directors, they may exhibit an above-average level of engagement in the subject matter of the survey. Therefore, response rates may be as high as 30-50%. Descriptive statistics will be used to analyze the quantitative data, and SurveyMonkey’s text analysis software will be used to analyze the open-ended responses.

REQUESTED APPROVAL DATE: 12-6-2013

NAME OF CONTACT PERSON: Chris Lemmie

TELEPHONE NUMBER: (202) 377-3225

MAILING LOCATION: 830 First St. N.E., Washington, DC 20202

ED DEPARTMENT, OFFICE, DIVISION, BRANCH: Chief Customer Experience Office,

Office of Federal Student Aid, U.S. Department of Education

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