Community Awareness Survey Submission Template

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 3045-0137

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Community Awareness of AmeriCorps Study

PURPOSE:

CNCS is currently engaged in various research projects to identify how grantees engage the communities they serve. Many of these research projects are using sophisticated sampling techniques (such as the AmeriCorps Community Engagement Survey) and rigorous analytical methodologies (such as the AmeriCorps Social Network Study). These studies depend on the level of awareness of AmeriCorps in communities that are served by AmeriCorps. The purpose of this data collection is to understand the familiarity with AmeriCorps of organizations that operate in communities served by grantees. Gathering this information is essential to test the assumption underlying our other research projects. The results will not be shared publicly and will be used to improve the CNCS research agenda and make it more relevant to CNCS, its grantees, and the communities it serves.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

The respondents will be one key informant per organization that has been identified as potentially interacting with the AmeriCorps grantee within the given community. The number of organizations contacted will depend on the size of the community. We anticipate no more than 50 unique organizations per community for total of 250 respondents (maximum).

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [ ] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[ ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software [ ] Small Discussion Group

[ ] Focus Group [ X] Other: snowball sample

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name:________________________________________________

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ X ] Yes [ ] No

2. If Yes, will any information that is collected be included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

3. If Yes, has an up-to-date System of Records Notice (SORN) been published? [ X ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [X] No

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Individuals	250	5 minutes	20.8 hours
Totals	250		20.8 hours

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $756.25

Average hourly wage ($36.30) based on the weighted average of wages for the variety of respondent occupational categories expected to participate in this survey: 10 Community and Social Service Occupations (21-000, $19.86), 1 Management Occupations (11-0000, $47.83), 10 Business and Financial Operations Occupations (13-0000, $29.97), 10 Administrative Services Manager (11-3011, $37.61), and 10 Education, Training, and Library Occupations (25-0000, $46.23). Data Source: National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates in the United States, May 2012, “U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics” (available at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_621400.htm)

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [X] Yes [ ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

We will be conducting a snowball sample, which is a purposeful nonprobability technique where key informants will be asked to identify other potential respondents who fit the selection criteria. For our first round, we will email each original informant from the five selected AmeriCorps sites and ask for a list of organizations with which they collaborate around a given focus area and the key personnel at those organizations. For the second round, we will contact these identified key personnel and ask for a list of organizations with which they collaborate around a given focus area and the key personnel at those organizations.

Based on our contact with key informants, we expect that they will identify no more than 15 organizations with whom they collaborate. We anticipate that the identified persons at these 15 organizations will list organizations already identified and introduce 2 new organizations per site. We will then contact the 30 new organizations and obtain their list of collaborating organizations. We anticipate that the new list will show that we have reached approximately 90% saturation (i.e. we will have identified 45 unique organizations). We expect 2-5 new organizations to be introduced in this round, the likely outliers of the network.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[X ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[X] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ ] Yes [X] No

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