Change Request

The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS)

(OMB no. 0920-0822 exp. date 06/30/2016)

Proposed Changes: Justification and Overview

1/28/2016

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promotes the prevention of intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking victimization. NCIPC sponsors The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) which is the only ongoing national survey dedicated solely to describing and monitoring intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking victimization as public health issues among adult women and men living in the United States. NCIPC strives to continuously improve the system and its underlying data collection tool.

Justification

Following OMB’s guidance, NCIPC is requesting OMB approval for a cognitive laboratory study as a non-substantive change request to the approved OMB# 0920-0822, The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS). NCIPC is also taking this opportunity to provide a brief update on the interagency collaboration with the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This Non-Substantive change requests will not create any current changes to the currently approved OMB# 0920-0822. Results from this cognitive laboratory study will be incorporated in the future ICR revision request for the currently approved ICR.

Project Description

During 2015, NCIPC initiated a process to enhance the NISVS system. The overarching goal of this effort was to enhance the ability of NISVS to provide timely data that are more easily accessed and used by those groups that have the greatest potential to take actions that can prevent IPV, SV, and stalking, particularly grantees and state-level prevention partners. To achieve this goal, NCIPC, in close collaboration with its partners and stakeholders, completed work to:

1. Revise the content of the NISVS data collection tool to provide information that is useful for guiding action at the state level.

2. Enhance the systems data collection methods to allow for increased precision, sensitivity, and representativeness.

3. Ensure that NISVS data are collected and managed in a way that allows for timely analysis & dissemination.

Examples of actions taken in pursuit of these objectives include but are not limited to:

1. Pooling of data from NISVS 2010, 2011, and 2012 data years to produce state-specific estimates that will be presented in a NISVS State Report in 2016

2. Increasing the number and diversifying the skill mix of program and analytic staff assigned to assist with NISVS operations.

3. Providing funding to increase the total number of completed interviews to be acquired via the NISVS contract.

4. Transitioning the system to use of a format where data collection occurs every other year that would enable substantial increases in the sample size during data collection years and create more time for generating data sets for public use and for generating data reports for use by prevention stakeholders

5. Collaborating with the Bureau of Justice Statistics to initiate a series of expert panel meetings throughout 2016 to obtain guidance on how to improve survey design (methods, sampling frame, recruitment, mode of administration etc. ) to increase response rates, reduce non-response bias, and maximize opportunities across Federal surveys for covering populations of interest.

Proposed Changes

As a specific element of the enhancement process, NCIPC simplified the NISVS data collection tool and added a small number of new questions that state health departments, state IPV/SV coalitions, and grantees have indicated will be useful. NCIPC has worked to streamline and improve the flow of the NISVS data collection tool without altering its core content on IPV, SV, and stalking prevalence. This was done to improve the performance of the NISVS data collection tool, decrease the level of burden on respondents, and reduce the time required to complete data processing, validation, and packaging for public release. A small number of questions on child exposure to physical or psychological IPV, normative beliefs about IPV, SV, and bystander intervention, and on barriers to bystander intervention were added to the data collection tool based on interests noted in feedback provided by NCIPC’s RPE and DELTA program grantees. Data from these questions could be used to facilitate and inform cross-sector efforts to prevent children’s exposure to domestic violence in states, inform the development of prevention messages focused on altering normative beliefs regarding IPV and SV, and provide grantees with repeated measurements of factors that are known to discourage action by bystanders. Inclusion of these questions in the NISVS data collection tool further aligns NISVS surveillance approaches with stakeholder needs and demonstrates responsiveness to their expressed recommendations for surveillance improvement.

The revised NISVS data collection is slated for deployment in 2016. However, before this tool can be implemented it is critical that cognitive testing to characterize its performance in real interview situations and to identify potential sources of response error be completed. The purpose of the current project is to conduct interviews with both victims of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking victimization as well as non-victims to gather feedback related to some modifications of existing questions and the addition of some new questions in the NISVS survey. The goal of gathering this feedback is to ensure that the terms and concepts used are universally understood by respondents and that the process of answering the survey questions is not overwhelming from a cognitive, time, or emotional burden perspective. In particular, we want to understand and address any sources of confusion related to revisions, including edits to introductions, the formatting and sequencing of questions, and the transition to the new questions. The information collected will be used to further refine and improve the NISVS survey to help ensure that the instrument is effectively and efficiently measuring these types of victimization.

The target population for the in-person interviews is victims of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking and non-victims living within 120 miles of the Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina. The only eligibility criteria are that the respondent be 18 years or older, speak English, and not be RTI employees or family members of RTI employees. We plan to recruit 30 total respondents, 8 non-victims and 22 victims of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking. Of the total 30 respondents, we plan to recruit 18 females (5 non-victims and 13 victims) and 12 males (3 non-victims and 9 victims). Table 1 also describes the types of respondents we hope to recruit.

Table 1. Target population

	Female	Male	Total
Non-Victim	5	3	8
Victim	131	92	22
Total	18	12	30

¹ Of the 13 total female victims, we hope to recruit and conduct interviews with at least four that have experienced stalking, four that have experienced sexual violence, and four that have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner.

² Of the 9 total male victims, we hope to recruit and conduct interviews with at least three that have experienced stalking, three that have experience sexual violence, and three that have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner.

The recruitment procedures are designed to ensure that participants include both female and male survivors of either intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking, in addition to respondents who have not necessarily experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking. We will also recruit non-victims through a more generic advertisement.

To recruit for the interviews, RTI staff will reach out to domestic violence shelters or other counseling programs within 120 miles of the Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina When reaching out to these centers, we will begin by explaining the purpose of the overall NISVS and the interview, and explain that we would like them to inform people who have been victimized about the opportunity to participate in cognitive laboratory studies. We will ask these staff members to think about survivors with whom they have worked and who they feel are ready to talk about their experiences and would be able to provide useful information about developing surveys on this topic.

Once the shelter or program has indicated its willingness to assist with recruitment, we will ask the staff to notify potentially eligible people about the interviews via word of mouth and flyers (see Appendix A). The flyers and will provide a web address to a short web screener, phone number and email address for the volunteers interested in participating to contact the project. The shelter or program can distribute or post the flyers if they prefer.

RTI staff will also post a recruitment advertisement on local craigslist.com websites, in local newspapers and reach out to staff at local non-profits and businesses such as the United Way, YMCAs, and the Durham Rescue Mission (see advertisement content in Appendix B). Flyers and e-messages will also be offered to organizations for distribution.

Volunteers will be asked to visit the web address provided to complete a brief screening questionnaire to obtain demographic information and determine eligibility (see Appendix C). Participants will also be given the option of calling a project staff member to complete the brief screening instead of completing via the web address (see Appendix D). This screener will also provide more information regarding the purpose and content of the interviews to the respondent. Based on responses to this screener and the remaining “types” of respondents needed for the interviews, a project staff member will follow up with eligible volunteers to confirm the information they provided and schedule a time to conduct the interview.

The web screener will inform participants about the nature of the study and a project staff member will also provide this information via phone calls to eligible volunteers. A screening log based on the web and phone screeners will be kept on the project share and will include only first names. The only other identifying information will be a phone number where they can be reached for an appointment reminder call (if appointment is made far in advance) and to notify them of any last minute changes in appointment time or location. Volunteers do not have to provide a phone number if they do not want to. If volunteers provide a phone number, they will be told that we will call them to remind them of their appointment and will leave a message on their answering machine or voicemail, if necessary. We will inform them that the following script will be used when leaving a message: “Hi, this is [NAME OF INTERVIEWER] just calling to remind you of our appointment to meet at [TIME] on [DAY][DATE]. If you have any questions, need to reschedule, or need further directions, you can call me/[INTERVIEWER] at [NUMBER]. Thank you! “If volunteers indicate that they do not want us to leave a message we will not do so.

Participants will first be administered the cognitive laboratory study consent form (see Appendix E). The interviews will be guided by the cognitive laboratory study protocol (see Appendix F) and will cover the entire survey instrument (see Appendix G). During the interviews, participants will be asked a series of open-ended probes at key points in the interview, which will be designed to capture understanding and feedback from the participants. Probes will be both scripted and spontaneous depending upon the direction of the interview and level of understanding from the participant.

Participants in the cognitive interviews for the National Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Survey will be offered an incentive of $40 dollars for completion of the cognitive interview. This same amount was used during the last round of cognitive interviews conducted for the National Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Survey in 2009. Cognitive Interview participants may be driving 60 miles or more roundtrip to participate in a face-to-face cognitive interview. The interview also may take up to two hours of the participant’s time (not including transportation time to and from the interview). Cognitive Interviews also require participants to think much more critically and provide more detailed information regarding their thoughts and process for answering questions, which tends to be more burdensome for respondents than merely providing answers to the survey. Thus, the $40 incentive is intended to provide compensation for the participant’s transportation costs (gasoline, bus fare, etc.) as well as act as a token of appreciation for their time and effort. Given that participant’s time commitment for completing the cognitive interviews may be approximately four times the amount of time required to complete the actual National Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Survey (which takes approximately 25 minutes to complete), a $40 incentive (four times the amount of the $10 incentive offered for completion of the actual survey) has proven reasonable to participants in the past. Furthermore, the contractor’s past experience conducting cognitive interviews of this length of time for numerous government agencies supports the appropriateness of the proposed $40 incentive. The CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control’s human subjects coordinator has determined that CDC will not be engaged in human subject research, therefore approval by the CDC IRB is not required. A copy of the contractor’s IRB document is included as Appendix H.

Change to Burden and/or Cost

The results from this cognitive laboratory study will be incorporated into the revision request for the currently approved ICR OMB # 0920-0822. However, the following burden table and cost is only for the cognitive laboratory study for new survey questions under the non-substantive change for National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence and is not to be included as changes to the currently approved burden and /or costs.

Burden Hours

Type of Respondent	Form Name	No. of Respondents	Response Burden (hours)	Total Burden Hours
Victims of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking and non-victims	Cognitive Laboratory Survey (App G)	30	120/60	60
	Web Survey Screener (App C)	40	5/60	4
	Phone Survey Screener (App D)	20	7/60	3
Total		90		67

The estimated annual cost to the Federal government for this cognitive laboratory study is $6,000.

Update on the interagency collaboration

In collaboration with BJS and per request from OMB, NCIPC created a panel of statistician experts. The timeline for the panel was provided to OMB through CDC-ICRO on Dec, 2015 (Appendix I). NCIPC and BJS were able to recruit the complete panel (Attached list of participants - Appendix J). The first panel meeting will be held in January, 2016. NCIPC is funding part of the panel activities through a contract. Jeff Hall (NCIPC) and Mike Planty (BJS) are in charge of the collaboration between NISVS, NCVS and the interagency activities.

Appendix

A Recruitment Flyer

B Recruitment Advertisements

C Recruitment Web Screener

D Recruitment Phone Screener

E Study Consent Form

F Study Protocol

G Cognitive Laboratory Survey

H Study IRB

I Expert Panel Timeline

J List expert panel