Form 12 Attachment 7 Key Staff Interview Protocol

Attachment 7

Key Staff Interview Protocol

OMB No.: 0925-XXXX

Expiration Date: XX/XX/20XX

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 60 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: NIH, Project Clearance Branch, 6705 Rockledge Drive, MSC 7974, Bethesda, MD 20892-7974, ATTN: PRA (0925-XXXX). Do not return the completed form to this address.

Rights of study participants are protected by The Privacy Act of 1974. Participation is voluntary, and there are no penalties for not participating or withdrawing from the study at any time. Refusal to participate will not affect your benefits in any way. The information collected in this study will be kept private to the extent provided by law. Names and other identifiers will not appear in any report of the study. Information provided will be combined for all study participants and reported as summaries. You are being contacted to participate in this data collection so that we can evaluate the Science Education Partnership Award Program.

Key Project Staff Interview

Date and time of interview: INSERT HERE

Names of Key Staff: INSERT HERE

Home Institution(s) of Key Staff: INSERT HERE

Project title: PREPOPULATE

Funded Year: PREPOPULATE

End Date: PREPOPULATE

Project abstract: PREPOPULATE

Introduction

• Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today about your work on [INSERT NAME OF SEPA PROJECT].

• The purpose of this interview is to get your views about various aspects of your project, including your experiences implementing the project, your project’s impacts, and lessons you learned from working as a team.

• The interview will take about an hour.

• Your participation is voluntary.

• We would like to audiotape this interview. It helps us take more accurate notes. Is that okay? At any point during the interview, we can stop or you can ask us to turn off the audio recorder. [If permission to tape is granted.] Recorded interviews will be stored in a secure location and will be destroyed after the end of the study.

• The data will be reported in aggregate and individuals associated with comments will not be disclosed.

• We are also interested in documents or other sources of information regarding any of the topics we discuss.

Implementation experiences

1. What were the main features of your project’s approach?

[Probe: What were your project’s main activities? Developing curriculum? Providing supplemental educational experiences for students? Teacher PD? Designing museums/exhibits? Developing communication materials? Outreac activities?]

2. Were you able to carry out the projects as planned?

[Probe: Please explain what you think contributed to these aspects going so well? Did project team members have specialized skills or experience? If so, what were they? If not, what problems arose?]

3. What were the biggest challenges the team faced implementing the project approach?

[Probe: What were the challenges, why did they occur, and how were they addressed? What factors helped and/or hindered working with project partners? Please describe in what ways these factors helped or were barriers.]

4. What types of support from SEPA would have made navigating these challenges easier?

[Probe: What support could be provided by others? Where did you turn for needed support? How adequate were these sources? What else would have been helpful had it been available?]

5. Your SEPA project involved x, y,z as partners.To what extent do you think project partners had a shared vision for/commitment to the project?

[Probe: Please briefly describe why you think so. To what extent was there consensus among team members? What do you think contributed to this? What else could have strengthened a shared vision within the project team? To what extent would this have required additional support? What type of support would have been helpful?]

6. To what extent were there established lines of communication among partner organizations?

[Probe: Please describe the communication process. In what ways did the process work well? What makes you think so? In what ways could it have been improved? Why do you think so?]

7. How often did meetings/communications take place that included all the project partners?as a team?

[Probe: Were communications too frequent/infrequent? If you had it to do again, what, if anything, would you suggest be done differently? How were the group’s communications facilitated? To what extent did technology support or introduce communication barriers?]

• Synchronous: conference calls, on-line, face-to-face

• Asynchronous: email

8. To what extent was it helpful working with an external evaluator?

[Probe: In what ways? What recommendations do you have for other SEPA projects about how to work productively/collaboratively with an external evaluator? How hard or easy do you think this is to do? What could make working with an evaluator easier? What makes you think so?]

Project impacts

The next set of questions asks about project impacts.

9. What was do you consider the project’s most significant outcomes?

[Probe: If the most significant outcome was an activity/ deliverable/output, ask: What was the impact of these deliverables and activities?]

10. Was the magnitude of this outcome aligned with your expectations?

[Probe: If not, in what ways was the outcome different than you expected?]

11. Is there evidence that this outcome occurred?

[Probe: If yes, ask what evidence there is. Were these data collected as part of the evaluation?]

12. Are there other noteworthy outcomes that your project achieved?

[Probe: If yes, ask what the outcomes were and if they were aligned with initial expectations.]

13. Is there evidence that these outcomes occurred?

[Probe: If yes, ask what evidence there is.]

14. Were there any outcomes that your project was designed to achieve but did not accomplish (e.g., outcome was not attained, or the actual outcome was less than anticipated)?

[Probe: If yes, what factors accounted for this?]

15. Are there outcomes that you believe occurred that you were not able to document through the evaluation?

[Probe: Why? What type of information would you need to evaluate these outcomes?]

16. Where there project outcomes that were hard to measure?

[Probe: What were they and what made measurement difficult?]

17. Did the project have unanticipated outcomes?

[Probe: How were these unanticipated outcomes detected? What suggestions do you have for other SEPA evaluators about ways to capture information about unanticipated outcomes?]

Lessons learned

18. What would you do differently if you had the chance to do this project again?

[Probe: What would be better as a result? What makes you think so?]

19. What lessons did you learn from working on this SEPA project?

20. What lessons did you learn about ways of working effectively with partners?

THANK YOU FOR TAKING TIME TO TALK WITH ME TODAY. OUR CONVERSATION WAS VERY HELPFUL. I ENJOYED TALKING WITH YOU.