Form 3 PI/CO-PI TELEPHONE INTERVIEW GUIDE

Attachment 3

PI/Co-PI Telephone Interview Guide

3. PI and Co-PI Core Project Leads

SCTC Telephone Interview Guide

OMB No: 0925-XXXX

Expiration Date: xx/xx/20xx

Collection of this information is authorized by The Public Health Service Act, Section 411 (42 USC 285a). Rights of study participants are protected by The Privacy Act of 1974. Participation is voluntary, and there are no penalties for not participating or withdrawing from the study at any time. Refusal to participate will not affect your benefits in any way. The information collected in this study will be kept private to the extent provided by law. Names and other identifiers will not appear in any report of the study. Information provided will be combined for all study participants and reported as summaries. You are being contacted to participate in this data collection so that we can evaluate the State and Community Tobacco Control (SCTC) Research Initiative.

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 40 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: NIH, Project Clearance Branch, 6705 Rockledge Drive, MSC 7974, Bethesda, MD 20892-7974, ATTN: PRA (0925-XXXX). Do not return the completed form to this address.

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this telephone interview focused on your involvement in the ____________ Project. As you know, this project is being sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. My name is ___________ and I work for a company called Westat, an independent research firm located in Rockville, Maryland. Westat was contracted by NCI to conduct these interviews as part of a larger assessment of SCTC.

As was explained in the initial invitation, your participation is voluntary and you can choose to not respond to any question for any reason. But keep in mind that the information you provide will be kept private to the extent provided by law. The information collected will be analyzed and published in aggregate form and we will not identify any individuals in any report or presentation.

Your participation will help provide valuable information that will assist NCI and NIH in making decisions regarding future program activities and their structure.

The interview will take approximately 40 minutes. We would like to audio-record it to ensure accuracy. Only the Westat team will have access to the recording for analytical purposes and the recording will be destroyed once the project is completed. Do I have your permission to continue?

Today’s conversation is going to cover your impressions of the overall SCTC initiative as well as your specific impressions of your Core Project <NAME>. By overall SCTC initiative we mean all of the individuals and institutions involved including all seven of the university based research centers, the coordinating center, and the affiliated partners. By Affiliated Partners we are referring to SCTC collaborators who are not SCTC grantees and are based outside of funded research centers. Affiliated partners can include representatives at state or local tobacco control programs, public health and community based organizations, Federal or State agencies, organizations hired to consult on SCTC projects or workgroups, as well as other academic institutions.

A. NETWORK

1. How would you describe the value of the overall SCTC initiative¹?

• Probe on how the SCTC network enables respondent to conduct research, meet researchers with similar interests, develop dissemination products, accomplish goals.

• Probe specifically on opportunities to learn and grow from each other.

• Especially opportunities for SCTC scientists and affiliated partners to learn and grow from each other?

2. In your experience, what factors tend to promote collaboration² within the SCTC Initiative

[Probe on structural and cultural factors.]

• If not mentioned, probe specifically on whether the U01 cooperative agreement explicitly helped promote collaboration?

• If not mentioned, probe specifically on collaboration between SCTC scientists and affiliated partners³?

• Probe for issues involving alignment, trust, and synergy

3. In your experience, what factors tend to inhibit collaboration within the SCTC initiative?

• If not mentioned, probe specifically on collaboration between SCTC scientists and affiliated partners?

4. Are there ways that NCI could help promote increased collaboration in the future?

• Probe specifically on how future RFAs could be written to promote greater collaboration?

• If not mentioned, probe specifically on increasing collaboration between SCTC scientists and affiliated partners?

• Are there ways in which NCI can help promote collaboration within the U01 cooperative agreement mechanism?

5. In your SCTC experience, you certainly interact with a wide variety of individuals both from within and beyond your research center. Are any individuals especially important / critical / influential to successful core project collaborations and why? If so, who and how are they important?

• Collect names, roles, and affiliations

B. PROCESSES AND ACTIVITIES

6. What components of the SCTC (Coordinating Center; Working Groups; Pilot Projects; Steering Committee; Annual Meetings) are most salient with respect to collaboration and accomplishing your goals?

[Note: This question tries to establish relative value of components with respect to promotion of collaboration. Q 7 examines absolute value of each component with respect to development of products.]

7. We’re interested in the unique value that each SCTC program component contributes toward the production of dissemination products. What unique processes and activities were made available through the various SCTC components?

[Discuss each component separately and collect examples. Be sure to invite potential negative features of each component as well. And probe for issues involving alignment, trust, and synergy.]

• Pilot Projects

• Working Groups

• Coordinating Center

• How does the Coordinating Center help promote collaborations?

• What else could the Coordinating Center do to promote more effective collaboration?

• Annual Meetings

8. If dissemination plans and target audiences changed since the original application was submitted, how, why, and who led that decision-making?

9. In what ways did participation in SCTC provide opportunities to learn how best to disseminate products so that they are effectively utilized by policy makers, practitioners, and the general public?

C. PRODUCTS

10. In what ways were products tailored / customized to different audiences?

• Probe on how local perspectives, demographic and/or cultural characteristics of target audience were taken into consideration. Collect illustrative examples.

11. Which aspects of the products got tailored and why?

• Was it their content, their format, or the strategy for how they will be disseminated?

• When did this take place? (Front end; mid-way; back end)

• Who (which partner) provided the impetus, input or data on which to tailor products?

• In what ways, if any, did collaboration facilitate the production of SCTC products?

[Collect illustrative examples.]

12. Which organization is taking the lead with respect to dissemination of products?

13. At this juncture, what are your impressions of the products emerging from the project?

• Do you believe the end users will find them useful? Relevant? Effective?

• How will you measure success in this case?

14. Which Pilot Project had the most substantive impact on products and why?

15. Which Work Groups had the most substantive impact on products and why?

16. Did the Coordinating Center have a substantive impact on products and why?

• Probe on the ways the Coordinating Center influenced product development and tailoring.

• Which individuals within the Coordinating Center were the most influential and why?

[Collect names, roles, and affiliations]

17. Did NCI have a substantive impact on products and why?

• Probe on the ways NCI influenced product development and tailoring.

• Are there additional processes or activities that NCI could provide to help promote product dissemination by either refining the RFA or structuring the SCTC network?

1 The “SCTC Initiative” includes all centers, the coordinating center, and affiliated partners.

2 Aspects of collaboration: communication; sharing knowledge; building consensus; joint development; coauthorship; division of labor; decision-making; etc…

3 Current collaborators for your SCTC work who are not SCTC research center-based scientists.