Supporting Statement A

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 0920-0919)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Learn the Signs. Act Early. Customization of Materials Customer Feedback Survey

PURPOSE:

Executive Order 12862 directs Federal agencies to provide service to the public that matches or exceeds the best service available in the private sector. In order to work continuously to ensure that our programs are effective and meet our customers’ needs, Learn the Signs. Act Early. (LTSAE) seeks to obtain OMB approval of a generic clearance to collect qualitative feedback on our service delivery. By qualitative feedback we mean information that provides useful insights on perceptions and opinions, but are not statistical surveys that yield quantitative results that can be generalized to the population of study.

This collection of information is necessary to enable LTSAE to garner customer and stakeholder feedback in an efficient, timely manner, in accordance with our commitment to improving service delivery. The information collected from our customers and stakeholders will help ensure that users have an effective, efficient, and satisfying experience with LTSAE’s programs. This feedback will provide insights into customer perceptions, experiences and expectations, provide an early warning of issues with service, and focus attention on areas where communication, training or changes in operations might improve delivery of products or services. These collections will allow for ongoing, collaborative and actionable communications between LTSAE and its customers. It will also allow feedback to contribute directly to the improvement of program management.

Background

In the United States, an estimated 15% of children have developmental disabilities (Boyle et. al., 2011). Most of these children will begin to show signs of their delay by age two, but only a few will receive early interventions, even though they have been shown to improve the development of children with delays (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 2008; Hebbeler et. al. 2007; Landa et. al. 2011). In fact, only 2.8% of infants and toddlers receive early intervention services through Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (ECTA Center 2015), and less than half of children with developmental disabilities are identified before they start school (Mackrides & Ryherd 2011; Glascoe 2005; Brothers et. al. 2008). By not being identified early, many children are losing valuable time that could be used to reduce the future negative effects of early delays.

Since 2004, CDC’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” (LTSAE) campaign (www.cdc.gov/actearly) promotes messages and materials that aim to increase parents’ awareness of healthy developmental milestones during early childhood, the importance of tracking each child’s development, and the importance of acting early if there are concerns.

Low-income families with young children are a priority audience of the campaign. A small budget prevents LTSAE from directly reaching this target audience with its messages and materials; therefore, one of LTSAE’s main dissemination strategies is through allowing for customization and distribution of materials by partners who directly reach low-income families. Key partners include but are not limited to: Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) clinics; childcare centers like Head Start and Early Head Start; pediatric and family clinics; and libraries. The ability for partners to customize and print LTSAE materials is important because it allows LTSAE materials to get into the hands of more families and helps make them more relevant to local audiences.

Improving agency programs requires ongoing assessment of service delivery, by which we mean systematic review of the operation of a program compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards, as a means of contributing to the continuous improvement of the program. LTSAE will collect, analyze, and interpret information from a survey (Attachments 1-word version & 3-screencaps) gathered through this generic clearance to identify strengths and weaknesses of current services and make improvements in service delivery based on feedback. The solicitation of feedback will target ease and use of customized materials. Responses will be assessed to plan and inform efforts to improve or maintain the quality of service offered to the public. If this information is not collected, vital feedback from customers on LTSAE’s customization process will be unavailable.

The proposed online surveys will assess the ability of LTSAE to facilitate reach by allowing customization and printing. A brief online survey will be administered twice per year, gathering feedback on participants’ ability to customize, the usefulness of the customization, and any additional needs they may have regarding LTSAE materials. Totals from these surveys will be automatically calculated based on the data the participants entered, and we hope the results will provide us with insight into the long-term utility of materials customization.

As required under this generic clearance, data collection in this request meets the following conditions:

• Information gathered will be used only internally for general service improvement and program management purposes and is not intended for release outside of LTSAE (if released, procedures outlined in Question 16 will be followed);

• Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions ¹;

• Information gathered will yield qualitative information; the collections will not be designed or expected to yield statistically reliable results or used as though the results are generalizable to the population of study ;

• The collections are voluntary;

• The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on considerations of total burden hours, total number of respondents, or burden-hours per respondent) and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal Government;

• The collections are non-controversial and do not raise issues of concern to other Federal agencies;

• Any 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 near future; and

• With the exception of information needed to provide remuneration for participants of focus groups and cognitive laboratory studies, personally identifiable information (PII) is collected only to the extent necessary and is not retained.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

Customized Materials Surveys (Attachments 1-word version & 3-screencaps) will be emailed directly to those who made customized materials requests (invitation email is Attachment 2); no personally identifiable information will be collected. This is a targeted, pre-determined sample based on who filed a customized materials request; therefore there are no burden hours for screening. Those who order LTSAE materials for customization include, but are not limited to, staff at Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) clinics; childcare centers like Head Start and Early Head Start; pediatric and family clinics; and libraries. Anyone within the United States can order materials for customization if they can justify their need for more than the normal order limits. There is no cost to respondents other than their time. Each person who makes a customization request since the last survey will receive a survey. An average of around six people make a customization request each month, and LTSAE will conduct a survey every six months, so each administration will go to around 36 people for a total of 72 per year. Each survey is estimated to take 5 minutes to complete, for a total burden of 6 hours per year. However, in the first survey, LTSAE will send the survey to anyone who has submitted a customization request in the two years prior to the first administration, which is approximately 108 additional people than typical administration, or an additional 9 burden hours, for a total of 15 in the first year.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

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

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

[ ] Focus Group [ ] Other:

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: Natalia Toledo Melendez, [email protected]

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

Personally Identifiable Information:

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

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

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [ ] 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

Three LTSAE staff completed the survey as if they were webinar participants in order to test how long they would take to complete. All staff members completed the survey in under five minutes, so we are rounding up in our estimate and calculating with an average completion time of five minutes.

Therefore, the burden for the initial administration is calculated as:

144 participants x 5 minutes) = 720 minutes /60 minutes = 12 hours

For each additional administration, the burden is calculated as:

36 participants x 5 minutes = 180 minutes /60 minutes = 3 hours

Therefore, the total estimated burden hours for the first year = 12 hours + 3 hours = 15 hours total burden for participants in the first year. For each year after that, the yearly burden = 3 hours + 3 hours = 6 hours total burden for participants in each consecutive year.

Table 2: Respondent Burden

Respondent Type	Instrument	Number of Respondents	Number of Responses Per Respondent	Burden per Respondent	Burden
Anyone who submitted a request for customization	Year 1	180	1	5/60	15 hours
	Each year after the first	72	1	5/60	6 hours

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is federal employee/contractor staff time. The approximately cost for all proposed surveys is $1,075. This is only the cost of personnel time in cleaning, analyzing and reporting the data (a fellow at about 40 hours).

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?

Anyone who requests materials for customization provides an email address in order to receive the customizable version of the materials. We will send the survey via an email with a link to each of these people via the email address they provided. Surveys will be administered once, and not all surveys will be completed by all potential respondents. The surveys will be deployed every six months.

Administration of the Instrument

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

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

[ ] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

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

Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the request.

List of Attachments

Att1: Word version of customized materials survey (Customized Materials Survey)

Att2: Survey invitation email (Survey Invitation Email for Customized Materials)

Att3: Survey screenshot (Screen Shots of Customized Materials Survey)

Att4: Customized Materials IRB Non-Research Determination

1 As defined in OMB and agency Information Quality Guidelines, “influential” means that “an agency can reasonably determine that dissemination of the information will have or does have a clear and substantial impact on important public policies or important private sector decisions.”

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