Research Plan

Testing Business-Case Videos for the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC)

Division of Community Health

Attachment 1 to the HMTS Expedited Review Form

Contents

Attachment 1a: Research Plan 1

Attachment 1b: Burden Hours 5

Attachment 1a: Research Plan

Testing Business-Case Videos for

CDC’s Division of Community Health

Background

The Division of Community Health (DCH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), through the implementation of a number of programs, is focused on helping communities prevent or reduce chronic diseases. Communication is a key component of these and other efforts of DCH and its awardees. In 2012 and 2013, in an effort to help inform the current and future communication efforts of DCH and its grantees and partners, DCH created six videos on “Making the Business Case for Prevention.” These videos provide awardee communities and others with business-case stories that demonstrate achievable community health changes and encourage local action nationwide. The videos focus on how improving public health is good for business—and the broader community—by profiling the successes of corner store owners, small grocery chain owners, real estate developers, and property managers of smoke-free multiunit housing. Links to the six videos—each of which is 3 to 4 minutes in length—are included in Attachment 2.

Video testing will be implemented with DCH awardees and business representatives to gather feedback on the six videos. The main purpose of this task is to gather feedback to evaluate whether the videos fulfill their intended purposes. Key questions that this evaluation will address include:

• Are the videos (and messages) appealing to businesspeople?

• Are the messages salient to businesspeople, and do they influence intention to change consistent with the video message?

• Do the videos meet DCH awardees’ needs?

The results of this evaluation will help inform future DCH communication efforts to most effectively support the implementation and success of community health efforts by DCH awardees, partners, and other stakeholders in communities across the United States.

Methodology and Research Design

CDC/DCH, with support from its communications contractor FHI 360, will implement video testing with two audiences: 1) business representatives, and 2) awardees of DCH programs. The data collection methodology will differ by audience and will involve the implementation of in-depth interviews (IDIs) and a survey.

IDIs

Individual in-depth interviews will be conducted to collect feedback from businesspeople on the six business-case videos. Each participant will view only one of the videos and will be asked about his or her reactions. Interviews will be conducted remotely by telephone and using a platform (e.g., GoToMeeting) that will allow participants to view the video during the discussion. The interview will take no more that 30 minutes to complete. The interview guide is included in Attachment 3.

FHI 360 will use the services of Research Now, a professional market research agency with an established business panel (i.e., participant pool) to recruit participants. To identify individuals eligible to participate, a link to a screening questionnaire will be emailed to members of the business panel who work in the types of business sectors that relate to the content featured in the videos, including the residential property management sector, grocery stores, and/or convenience stores. The screening instrument is included in Attachment 4. Those eligible to participate based on responses to the screening instrument will be contacted to schedule the interview. Eligible businesspeople from across the United States will be identified through screening, of which up to 60 will be recruited to participate in the interview. Participation in the IDIs will be voluntary.

Business participants will receive an incentive for their participation. Specifically, all individuals who complete the screening survey will receive points awarded by the market research firm that hosts the business panel. This is a standard procedure for business panels. Points are awarded to a panel member after completing a survey. They have no monetary value, but once a member accumulates enough points, they can be exchanged for rewards (e.g., products, services, gift cards). The businesspeople who go on to complete the telephone interview will receive $50 for their participation. Research shows that without providing minimal levels of incentive, insufficient participants will take part, and results will not be useful. For example, in 2009 Krueger and Casey indicated that with respect to incentives for study participants, “amounts of $50 to $75 usually work for public and nonprofit studies. As the amount approaches $100, an interesting phenomenon begins to occur. If the participant has a last-minute conflict, they are more likely to call the moderator and offer to send a replacement in their absence. When working with elite categories of focus group participants, the amounts may need to be adjusted upward. Focus groups with engineers, physicians, attorneys, upper-level managers, and similar categories may require amounts in the $100 to $500+ range.”¹ Therefore, the proposed $50 incentive represents the minimal level of incentive deemed suitable for study participants in the recent past. Businesspeople (who are being recruited for their particular role in their business sector) have multiple demands on their time, and this level of incentive will help ensure sufficient attendance and participation.

The $50 incentive will be a cash incentive rather than an alternate form of incentive (e.g., gift card to a store) because guidance on research studies suggests that “incentives should be selected that have universal value to participants; what may be valuable to one person may have little value to other. This is one reason money is employed most often.”² Given that the businesspeople will be participating in remote interviews, the incentive will be mailed to them upon the completion of the interview in the form of a $50 cash card (e.g., Visa Gift Card).

Survey

A self-administered online survey will be implemented to collect feedback from DCH awardees on the six business-case videos. Each participant will be asked to view and provide feedback on up to two of the videos. The survey, which will be administered using Qualtrics software, will take no more than 30 minutes to complete. The survey instrument is included in Attachment 5.

The participant sample will be identified from DCH’s existing lists of program awardees. Specifically, awardees whose funded DCH program work involves at least one of the following types of efforts featured in the videos will be invited to participate: 1) making multiunit housing smoke-free, or 2) offering healthier options in grocery stores and/or corner stores. Approximately 90 awardee sites will be eligible to participate (90 x 2 representatives = 180 respondents). Awardees are located across the United States.

The main communication representative and the program manager from each eligible awardee site will be sent an email alerting them to the upcoming survey, explaining its purpose, and requesting their participation. A link to the survey will then be distributed to them by email. After the initial email, two follow-up reminders will be sent (each a week apart) to encourage participation in the survey. The survey will close a week after distribution of the final reminder. The survey will be fielded for a period of up to 3 weeks. Participation in the survey will be voluntary. Survey participants will not receive an incentive for their participation.

Data Security

Response data will be kept separate from any personally identifiable information collected from participants for recruitment purposes (e.g., telephone numbers, email addresses). The questions in the survey instrument and interview will not request personally identifiable information from respondents. However, if personally identifiable information are volunteered by participants in their responses to survey or interview questions, those identifiers will be removed from data files. Only project staff associated with this video testing effort will have access to the response data. Response data will be treated in a secure manner and will not be disclosed, unless otherwise compelled by law. We will keep the digital audio recordings of the interviews in a password-protected folder. The recordings will be destroyed by December 2015.

The findings of the video testing will be reported in aggregate form. Information transmitted to CDC by FHI 360 will be de-identified.  Summary reports will not identify any individuals.

Participation in the survey and interview will be based on informed consent to the study procedures. The consent information is contained in the interview guide found in Attachment 3 and the survey instrument found in Attachment 5.

Analysis

FHI 360 research staff will analyze the data collected and summarize key findings into a topline report.

• Survey: Data analysis will be conducted using SAS. The survey will be primarily quantitative in nature, but will include a few open-ended questions to collect key narrative feedback. Responses to open-ended questions on the survey will be coded for analysis.

• Interviews: Upon completion of all IDIs—which will be qualitative in nature—FHI 360 research staff will analyze participant responses using a systematic qualitative approach to identify themes.

Attachment 1b: Burden Hours

Testing Business-Case Videos for

CDC’s Division of Community Health

Burden Hours

Type of Respondents	Form Name	Number of Respondents	Number of Responses per Respondent	Burden per Response (in hrs)	Total Burden (in hrs)
DCH Awardees	Survey Instrument	180	1	30/60	90
Businesspeople	Eligibility Screener	60	1	5/60	5
	Interviewer Guide	60	1	30/60	30
Total					125

1 Krueger RA. Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; 2009.

2 Stewart DW, Shamdasani PN. Focus Groups: Theory and Practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications; 1990.