Generic Clearance Request

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 2127-0682)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION:

Fast Track Generic Clearance for the Collection of Qualitative Feedback on Agency Service Delivery

PURPOSE:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was established by the Highway Safety Act of 1970 (23 U.S.C. 101) to carry out a Congressional mandate to reduce the mounting number of deaths, injuries and economic losses resulting from motor vehicle crashes on our Nation’s highways. In support of this mission, NHTSA has developed a public service communications campaign designed to deter impaired driving. At this time, NHTSA proposes to conduct information collections to gain feedback on creative concepts prior to producing the national public service advertising campaign.

For this, NHTSA proposes to conduct 9 focus group sessions, each lasting 90 minutes with 6 participants in each. Recruiting will be done via telephone screening calls estimated to take no more than 10 minutes each. The total estimated burden for this information collection is 90 hours.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

The target audience of the campaign is U.S. adult male drivers age 21-34 who drink alcohol at least occasionally and drive to venues where alcohol is consumed. Respondents will include a fair representation of demographics including race/ethnicity, education level, and income. The focus group discussions will be conducted in three diverse geographic markets. Planned markets include Austin, TX; Los Angeles, CA; and Paramus, NJ.

To better explore whether the creative impacts the conversation around impaired driving, we will recruit friendship pairs for some of the focus groups. This friendship dynamic will allow for better understanding of the social considerations that impact decisions while also allowing for individual expression in response to the creative concepts.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

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

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

[X] Focus Group [ ] Other: Online Survey

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: Susan McMeen

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

3. If Yes, has an up-to-date System of Records Notice (SORN) been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [X] Yes [ ] No

Each respondent will be provided with $75 following their participation in a focus group session. This amount is in line with the industry standard. These industry-standard stipends help to ensure that respondents can be recruited efficiently and ensure their arrival and participation in the groups. These standards exist to provide fair compensation for costs incurred by participants while attending groups, based on the location of and expenses in each market.

BURDEN HOURS

No. of Respondents	No. of Responses per Respondent	Average Burden per Response (hours)	Total Burden Hours
54 Participants (Screening call)	1	1/6 hours (10 minutes)	9
54 participants (Focus group discussion)	1	1.5 hour (90 minutes)	81
TOTAL			90

The maximum total input cost, if all respondents were interviewed on the job, is estimated as follows:

$17.40 per hour* x 90 interviewing hours = $1,566

* May 2015 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates United States

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $58,000.

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?

Each focus group facility in each city does the recruiting on NHTSA’s behalf, per the screeners NHTSA provides. The facility’s recruiting staff works primarily from a pool within their proprietary database of people in that particular marketplace who have previously submitted demographic, lifestyle and product preference information. So based on submission of NHTSA’s screener, the recruitment manager will filter the database to search for potential respondents in the project’s specifications. Then the recruiters will place telephone calls to those potential respondents to administer the full screener.

If there is more than one person in a household who may match the screening criteria, the recruiter will screen only the first one willing to be screened. After going through the database, if the recruiters can't fill the project’s total numbers and/or quotas, the secondary step is the facility procuring sample from any of numerous national sample providers of names, addresses and phone numbers. The recruiters then make phone calls to this list until the recruiting is completed.

If an individual qualifies based on the screener, he will be invited to participate. For the proposed friendship groups, if an individual qualifies and agrees to participate, he will also be asked to provide the names and contact information of at least 2 friends (males 21-34) who will then be contacted to undergo the same screening protocol.

Please see recruitment screener attached.

Administration of the Instrument

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

[ ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[X] Telephone

[X] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

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

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

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