Health Message Testing System Expedited Review Form
Title of Study:
CDC/NCEH TO21: Outdoor Air Quality Focus Groups
Study Population:
On behalf of CDC, CommunicateHealth will recruit a total of 48 participants for 6 in-person focus groups in San Francisco, CA, and the Washington, D.C. metro areas (3 groups in each location). Our desired participants are adults with asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and parents of children with asthma and diabetes.
Age: Recruit a mix of ages (no participants will be under 18 years old)
Education level: At least a third will have a high school education or less
Race/Ethnicity: Mixed
Gender: Mixed
Income level: At least a third will be considered low income
Health status: Mix of adults with asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and parents of children with asthma and diabetes, according to the following:
Group 1: Adults with asthma – San Francisco
Group 2: Adults with asthma – Washington, D.C.
Group 3: Adults with cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes – San Francisco
Group 4: Adults with cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes – Washington, D.C.
Group 5: Parents of a child with asthma or diabetes – San Francisco
Group 6: Parents of a child with asthma or diabetes – Washington, D.C.
We will exclude from participation people who:
Are under the age of 18
Have participated in any research within the past 6 months
Conduct market research or work in advertising or public relations
Work in public health or health care
Work for the Federal government
Are unable to speak and read English well enough to complete the study
See Attachment H for the Recruitment Screener.
UserWorks, Inc. (http://www.userworks.com) will conduct recruitment for the focus groups on behalf of CommunicateHealth. UserWorks recruits and schedules participants for client-run studies -- including usability tests, focus groups, and user surveys -- according to client-specified screening criteria. They maintain a database of willing volunteers and target specific external groups as needed. UserWorks recruits participants from diverse backgrounds and has access to a large pool of potential participants.
Respondent characteristics:
Number of subjects: 48
Number of males: Approximately 24
Number of females: Approximately 24
Age range: 18 - 90
Racial/ethnic composition: Mixed
Special group status: Mix of adults with asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and parents of children with asthma and diabetes
Geographic location/s: 24 in Washington, D.C. metro area, 24 in San Francisco metro area
Incentives:
Participants will be offered $75 cash as a token of appreciation for their participation in a 90-minute focus group:
This amount is consistent with standard practice for qualitative data collection efforts and CH’s experience with this population on previous projects.
Note: In the spring of 2015, CommunicateHealth was unable to complete a recruit using a lower incentive ($40). The recruitment firm contacted over 1,600 individuals for a 24-person focus group study. The recruitment firm could not complete the recruit at a $40 incentive and the study had to be canceled.
This amount has also been shown to be the minimum required incentive to offset the challenges for this audience to travel to and participate in a focus group outside of regular work hours. Incentive amounts lower than this make it difficult to recruit this audience.
The recruitment company will use the incentive in order to recruit a diverse set of participants.
CommunicateHealth will retain copies of the incentive receipt forms (Appendix I) on a secure server.
Study method:
Central location intercept interview: _____
Telephone interview: _____ (CATI used: yes or no) _____
Individual in-depth interview (cognitive interview): _____
Focus group: ___X__
Online interview: _____
Other: (describe) _________________________________
Purpose of the overall communication effort into which this health message/s will fit:
On behalf of CDC, CommunicateHealth will conduct a needs assessment of at-risk populations to understand attitudes and behaviors towards the Air Quality Index (AQI)1 and preferences for communication materials. The goal of the study is to examine barriers and facilitators among at-risk populations for adopting recommended health behaviors in locations or situations with poor outdoor air quality. CH will conduct focus groups with at-risk populations (defined as adults who have asthma, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, or who have a child diagnosed with asthma or diabetes). Based on focus group findings, CH will make recommendations for better health messaging to reach at-risk populations, potentially including development of new communication tools, materials, and messaging strategies. The goal of the study is to gather knowledge that will help CDC better communicate with the public about outdoor air quality.
Category of time sensitivity: (Please check one below)
Health emergency: _____
Time-limited congressional/administrative mandate: _____
Press coverage correction: _____
Time-limited audience access: _____
Ineffective existing materials due to historical event/social trends: _X_
Trend tracking: _____
Describe nature of time sensitivity: (Please provide 2-3 sentences below.)
Outdoor Air Quality Focus Groups study addresses an important public health need to develop health communication tools for at-risk groups. Additionally, work is being done under contract and the contract has an expiration date, which makes this information collection time sensitive.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Number of burden hours requested: 84
BURDEN HOURS
Category of Respondent |
No. of Respondents |
Participation Time (minutes) |
Burden (hours) |
At-risk adults screened |
144 |
5/60 |
12 |
Focus groups of at-risk adults |
24 |
90/60 |
36 |
Focus groups of parents of at-risk children |
24 |
90/60 |
36 |
Totals |
192 |
|
84 |
Are you using questions from the approved question bank? If yes, please list the item number(s) for questions used from the question bank.
Yes: __X (specific questions are listed in “yellow” highlights in the protocol and attachments)
No: _____
The following HMTS question numbers were used:
95.D
130.D
69.D
70.D
80.D
38.D
117.D
118.D
6.E
8.E
2.E
24.D
7.D
12.E
1.F
1.A
2.A
42.1
2.B
1.B
4.A
6.A
*** Items Below to be completed by Office of Associate Director for Communication (OADC)***
1. Number of burden hours remaining in current year’s allocation: _______
2. OADC confirmation of time-sensitivity:
Yes: _____
No: _____
_____________________________________
Project Officer Signature
1 https://www.airnow.gov/
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| File Title | Attachment 3: Health Message Testing System Expedited Review Form |
| Author | Angela Ryan |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-25 |