Supporting Statement

OMB Control No. # 693-0031 – NIST Generic Request for Customer Service-Related Data Collections

NIST Balanced Score Card Survey for Conference and Training Attendees with Optional Questions

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

The attached instrument and optional questions will be used as a post-conference/post-training survey. The survey will be distributed to attendees of NIST conferences, meetings and training sessions for which registration is required. The majority of the attendees who will be asked to complete the survey are NIST customers who have paid an attendance fee in order to attend the conference or training. Others who will complete the survey are NIST staff members who also attend the conferences or training. Optional questions will be used to tailor the survey to specific conferences or training.

This group is appropriate to survey because it represents the individuals whose views and opinions are important for NIST to understand in order to provide high levels of customer satisfaction and appropriate products and services.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

This survey was developed by an internal work team with responsibilities for planning and conducting conferences and training. The document has been pre-tested within NIST. Based on the internal pre-test, it is estimated to take less than two minutes to complete the survey when multiple choice questions are completed and less than five minutes to complete the survey when a respondent completes the open-ended questions. Optional questions will be used as part of the survey when appropriate.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

To secure a high rate of response, the survey will be given to participants at the end of a conference or training opportunity and they will be encourage to fill-out the survey. An electronic version of the survey will also be provided on the Internet. Since the majority of the participants provide an email address, a thank you note with a link will be sent, following a conference or training, asking them to complete the survey if they have not already done so. The expected response rate is 80%. A follow-up email reminder will be sent to non-respondents.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

The results of the survey will be used to satisfy the requirement of the NIST Senior Management Board to gather data for the NIST balanced scorecard, with the goal of using the data to improve products and service delivery. The individual data will be gathered by each program area and will be provided to NIST’s Public and Business Affairs Office, which will aggregate the data for reporting purposes.