Generic Clearance Request

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

T ITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Generic Clearance for the Collection of Qualitative Feedback on Advanced Safety Nomenclature for Office of Vehicle Safety Research Driver Assistance Technology Naming Protocol Alignment.

PURPOSE:

Part of NHTSA’s role is to provide consistent communication in promotions, online descriptors, and other public-facing material of information regarding motor vehicle safety. Greater proliferation of driver assistance technologies across new Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) automotive models has made it vital to create a consistent naming protocol and increase public awareness and comprehension of safety implications. Additional inputs can better position the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to create a standard nomenclature that provides consumers with increased clarity and the ability to more efficiently compare capabilities across models and OEMs. In support of this, NHTSA plans to reassess the most resonant nomenclature and communication lexicon to best engage the public in an effective dialogue around these new technologies.

NHTSA is seeking approval of an information collection to assess potential naming conventions and possible ways to effectively convey the function of new driver assistance technologies with the goal of increasing awareness and educating consumers to make informed decisions.

Knowledge gained from this research will improve the agency’s ability to engage the public through increased awareness of recent driver assistance technologies, inform NHTSA’s messaging efforts to better educate consumers when making new vehicle purchase decision and create a foundation to begin discussions with OEMs to standardize the naming protocol for safety technologies.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

The respondents for this study will include two audiences.

The first audience will be comprised of a national, new vehicle purchase-minded audience of U.S. adults aged 18 and older. This research defines a new vehicle purchase-mindset as having purchased a new vehicle within the last 12 months, or planning to purchase a new vehicle within the next six months.

A second audience will consist of an informed target audience of U.S. drivers 18 and older. This research defines an informed audience as currently owning a vehicle equipped with a minimum of two (2) driver assistance technologies.

Recruiting for both audiences will be designed to ensure a diverse range of participants across key demographic criteria, including gender, age, income, education and ethnicity.

We plan to conduct qualitative research in the form of an online bulletin board. An online bulletin board is similar to a traditional focus group in that it allows for a group of people to come together to have a moderated discussion about a topic. There are several advantages of conducting an online bulletin board versus an in-person focus group. One key advantage of online bulletin boards is that they allow participants to be drawn from a nationwide audience. A second key advantage focuses on lower respondent time commitment and burden. The online bulletin boards take place over 4 days where a moderator will post new questions and topic content for participants to react to on 3 out of the 4 days. Day 3 is a review day, allowing participants to catch up on commentary from the group, but no new questions from the moderator will be posted and the time commitment on Day 3 would be significantly less than the other three days where new content is posted. Online bulletin boards require a time commitment of 15-20 minutes on each of the 3 days of new content over the full course of the 4 day forum for a total of 45-60 minutes. Participants are informed during the screening process that they need to participate in all days of new content to receive an incentive. By comparison, traditional focus groups require 90-120 minutes, plus travel time to and from a focus group facility for a total of up to three hours’ time per participant. While online bulletin board participants are required to log in to the bulletin board multiple times a day to react to other participant’s comments, the overall time commitment is substantially less for online bulletin boards when compared to traditional focus groups.

The online bulletin board will include a total of 100 participants equally divided between the two key audiences: 50 participants from the national new vehicle purchase-minded audience and 50 participants from the informed U.S. vehicle-owner audience. Screening criteria will require that all respondents have a valid driver’s license.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

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

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

[ ] Focus Group [X] Other: Online Bulletin Board

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? [X] Yes [ ] No

The third-party vendor collects information from the research participants in order to provide them with the incentive. No PII is reported to NHTSA. No responses will be connected to individual respondents; only aggregate data will be reported.

2. If Yes, will any information that is collected be included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [X] 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

It is standard practice to provide a basic incentive in order to avoid bias of receiving responses only from individuals generally predisposed to be helpful. Participants in this research will not be offered incentives provided directly by NHTSA. The third-party vendor will fulfill incentives at the standard rate of $75 for each participant.

NHTSA intends to use a $75 incentive and an online bulletin board focus group format due to the hard-to-reach nature of the target audiences for this research, and the research study’s requirement that participants provide thoughtful and coherent narrative responses. Both target audiences are small subsets of the population, being either those in a new vehicle purchase mindset (Audience 1 - having leased or purchased a vehicle within the past 12 months or plan to do so within the next 6 months) or those who currently have at least two eligible advanced safety technologies equipped in their vehicle (Audience 2). Recruitment is also difficult because it is structured to ensure respondents represent a mixture of gender, age, race/ethnicity, region, income and education. Based on the agency’s experience and expertise, NHTSA expects these specific target audiences will be challenging to find in the general public. Therefore, NHTSA must offer a sufficient incentive to recruit enough individuals from the target audiences willing to engage for the entire duration of the research project. Maintaining the same participants throughout the four days of research is essential to this research design and a sufficient incentive is essential to ensure that participants do not drop out of the study. This study requires participants to spend an average of 60 minutes thoughtfully and coherently responding to questions about advanced safety technologies over the course of four days. Therefore, due to the difficulty in recruiting respondents willing to spend their time and effort participating in this research study, NHTSA has determined that an incentive of $75 is necessary.

While it is challenging to recruit members of the target audiences for this online bulletin board, it would be even more challenging to conduct this research in person. Because of the hard-to-reach nature of the target audiences and the time and inconvenience involved in driving to a designated research location, the incentive that would be required to recruit for an in-person focus group would be significantly higher than the standard $75 rate for this type of study. Therefore, NHTSA has is conducting this research online.

A research study that is conducted remotely, as the online bulletin board is, must offer an incentive “considerably less” than offered for an in-person focus group. Given an in-person focus group for this particular study would require a larger incentive than the standard rate of $75, due to the hard-to-reach nature of the target audience, an incentive of $75 would be justified for this online bulletin board study. Without this higher incentive, NHTSA would be unable to recruit enough qualified respondents willing to participate over four consecutive days, without missing a day or dropping out of the study all together.

BURDEN HOURS

Based on experience, it is prudent to recruit 62 people in order to help achieve at least 50 active participants for each board across all days the research bulletin board is open. We estimate the response rate for our highly-specified target samples (national new vehicle purchase-minded drivers and informed U.S. vehicle-owners) is approximately 10%. In order to identify 62 qualified participants per board, roughly 558 people will be needed to complete a 2.5-minute partial-screener (estimate based-off termination expectations), and 62 qualified participants will be needed to complete a 5-minute full-screener per board. It is important to note that although 62 qualified participants will be identified, that is to account for attrition from “no shows” based on historic averages. “No-shows” are recruited participants who do not participate in the board, and thus have no additional time burden.

Thus, the total burden per unqualified/refusal respondents is estimated to be 2.5 minutes, per qualified participant is estimated to be 65 minutes (5 minutes for the screening/recruiting telephone call, plus 60 minutes of active participation in the online bulletin board), and per qualified “no-show” is estimated to be 5 minutes (5 minutes for the screening/recruiting telephone call, but 0 minutes for no participation in the online bulletin board).

The total estimated burden imposed by recruiting and conducting the online bulletin boards is approximately:

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden [No. of Respondents x Participation Time]
Unqualified/Refusal Respondents: total number of individuals who will be contacted, but screened out or refuse participation.	1116	2.5 minutes	46 hours 30 minutes
U.S. New Vehicle Purchase-minded: total number of individuals screened in and participating in the 4-day BB for this audience.	50	65 minutes	54 hours 10 minutes
Recruited “No-Shows”: total number of individuals screened in but do not show or participate during research period.	12	5 minutes	1 hours
Informed U.S. Vehicle Owners: total number of individuals screened in and participating in the 4-day BB for this audience.	50	65 minutes	54 hours 10 minutes
Recruited “No-Shows”: total number of individuals screened in but are do not show or participate during research period.	12	5 minutes	1 hours
Totals	1240		156 hours 50 minutes

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $108,750.

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? [ ] Yes [X] 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?

Convenience samples of research participants are screened and recruited to reflect the target audiences. NHTSA plans to work with Heart+Mind Strategies and Focus Forward, third-party vendors, to recruit individuals that meet the criteria for each audience. Recruitment will take place using Focus Forward’s own double opt-in panel. A link to an online screening instrument will be sent in an email invitation, followed by additional instructions for joining the online bulletin board should a respondent qualify to participate. Recruitment will be monitored to include a mixture of gender (among the national audience), age, race/ethnicity, region, income and education.

Administration of the Instrument

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

[X] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ ] Telephone

[ ] 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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