Mini Supporting Statement A
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Personas and Experience Mapping Project
Date: October 24, 2018
Sub-study under,
“A Generic Submission for
Formative Research, Pretesting, and
Customer Satisfaction of NCI’s Communication and Education Resources,
OMB No. 0925-0046,
Contact Information
Nina Goodman
Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL)
National Cancer Institute
List of Attachments
Attachment 1. Invitation language and information about research
Attachment 2. Screener Screenshots
Attachment 3. Interview Guide
Section 412 of the Public Health Service Act (42 USC § 285a-1) authorizes the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to establish and support programs for the detection, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer; and to collect, identify, analyze and disseminate information on cancer research, diagnosis, prevention and treatment. The Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), is engaged in a variety of activities that ensures NCI information is meeting the needs of its intended audiences in order to support its programs.
To this end, NCI/OCPL is initiating a multi-phase, collaborative project to adopt a more audience-centered design approach for its communications for NCI’s internal and external researcher audiences. The project involves working with a core team of NCI Divisions, Offices, and Centers (DOCs) and OCPL representatives to collect data about the experience and needs of the researcher audiences and create personas, experience maps, and communication design tools, to give DOCs an expanded means to support the researcher experience on all potential communication channels.
NCI’s researcher audiences are diverse regarding career stage, scientific discipline, channels with which they interact, purpose of engagement with NCI, and other factors. Personas and other communication design tools will help NCI DOCs identify with researcher needs, identify areas for improvement in communications, and maintain beneficial communications with researchers. The aim of the project is to co-develop, with a team of DOC representatives, a standard set of researcher-centered communication design tools to support a unified approach from NCI, considering factors most common among NCI-affiliated researchers.
NCI has a contract with a local research organization that has been supporting NCI with user experience research projects since 2013. With input from the core team, the contractor will lead the process to facilitate meetings, collect and analyze data, and facilitate the co-development process of the tools with NCI.
For this research, several interviews will be conducted with both internal NCI federal staff as well as external, non-government staff.
Collecting information from users will allow the government to better understand the needs of this critical audience of researchers to inform programmatic decisions.
NCI is embarking on efforts to adopt a more user-centered design approach to its website and other communications for the researcher audiences. As such NCI is interested in development of personas, experience/journey maps, and tool kits to give NCI Divisions, Offices, and Centers (DOCs) the tools they need to support the researcher experience on all potential NCI channels. NCI’s researcher audiences are diverse regarding career stage, scientific discipline, channels with which they interact, purpose of engagement with NCI, and other factors. Personas and other communication design tools will help NCI DOCs identify with researcher needs, identify areas for improvement in communications, and maintain effective communications with researchers.
The project will be conducted in collaboration with, and guided by, a core NCI team with representatives from the following DOCS: Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG), Center for Cancer Research (CCR), Division of Cancer Biology (DCB), Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP), Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD), and Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL). This document outlines the goals and scope for this project.
Goals:
(1) Conduct the research necessary to develop user-centered researcher personas representative of the typical researcher audiences with which NCI communicates,
(2) Develop the user-centered research personas and accompanying experience/journey map,
(3) Identify and develop useful tool kits for DOCs to develop personas specific to DOC audiences and needs.
Research Methods and Participants:
Appropriate primary and secondary user-centered research will be conducted to answer the following questions:
What are the characteristics and communication need of NCI’s researcher audiences (federal and non-federal) for the participating DOCs.
What is the communication needs of the program directors?
What do the end-user designers need in a persona to be useful?
What kinds of tools and materials will be most helpful for all participating DOCs.
Research participants will include program directors, NCI researchers (both federal and non-federal familiar with NCI and not familiar with NCI), and NCI Cancer.gov designers (federal staff and contractors). Participants will be identified by NCI and recruited via email (Attachment 1).
Development of Personas, Experience Map, and Tool Kits:
Based on the results of the research, a set of typical researcher personas relevant for use by all participating DOCs will be developed. Personas should account for characteristics such as career stage, scientific discipline, relationship with NCI, reason for engagement, type of researcher, information seeking behavior and patterns, and other relevant characteristics identified through the user research. Personas will be developed collaboratively with DOCs in a workshop type setting. Based on the personas, the contractor will develop an experience map and/or journey maps to gain a better understanding of the researcher interaction with NCI and help identify pain points and areas of improvements in the communications experience. Finally, the contractor will create a toolkit of supporting materials to support the DOCs in using these resources and creating their own additional personas and/or journey maps.
During all processes, the contractor will be expected to gain, and maintain, buy-in and involvement of the core DOC group.
The screening will be done online (Attachment 2) and interviews will be conducted over the phone (Attachment 3). The use of a telephone interview for gathering qualitative feedback enables the participant to respond at a time and location that is convenient for them. Skip patterns are built into the structured interview as well. Those who wish to participate in the structured phone interview can provide an email address to enable establishment of a convenient call time.
This information is unique to the NCI and is not found elsewhere.
No small businesses or other small entities will be impacted.
This is a one-time information collection.
This survey will be implemented in a manner that fully complies with 5 C.F.R. 1320.5.
N/A
Participants will receive a $150 Visa gift card as remuneration for their participation in the interview. Sessions will last approximately 60 minutes and an additional 5 minutes for a screener, prior to the interview. Participants in this study may include senior clinical cancer researchers and cancer research directors who likely earn annual salaries greater than $100K (www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes191042.htm). Participants will be scheduling the interview around their work schedule or during work hours which my result in lost billable time with their employers. Participants in this age range may also be responsible for childcare and therefore may incur the cost of a sitter if participating outside of scheduled work hours. These are participants’ potential base costs which does not consider the amount to incentivize respondents to show and participate. When considering the time and cost of participating in an interview, a high no-show rate may result if a $150 incentive is not used.
From past experience, a $150 incentive for a 60-minute session for this type of population allows for successful recruitment by increasing the attendance rate while controlling the amount of time required for recruitment. There is also a concern that if the incentive is not attractive enough to participants, there may be a high no-show rate and the study would need to be extended or redone in order to obtain quality results. This is a standard industry rate for the type of respondents required for this research and will allow for a timelier recruitment which reduces costs in terms of delaying the study until appropriate participants are found.
Full name and contact information will be collected in order to contact participants and will be kept private to the extent permitted by law.
Sensitive questions being asked include race, ethnicity, age, education, and gender. Per the full Generic Supporting Statement, A, p. 5 “Other information that may be gathered on respondents regarding gender, age, socioeconomic level, race/ethnicity, and family medical history provides a basis for evaluating whether the messages may be perceived differently by different segments of the audience. For example, selected age groups may find a particular brochure or message on cancer prevention more relevant than other age groups.” This information is collected for this purpose.
These respondents will take approximately 5 minutes to complete screening questions and 60 minutes to arrange to complete the interview. The total burden is approximately 19 hours (Table A.12-1) and the cost to the respondents is estimated to be $749.74 (Table A.12-2).
Category of Respondent |
Number of Respondents |
Number of Responses per Respondent |
Average Time Per Response (in hours) |
Total Annual Burden Hours |
Individuals (Screener) |
30 |
1 |
5/60 |
3 |
Individuals (Interview) |
16 |
1 |
1 |
16 |
Total |
16 |
16 |
|
19 |
Category of Respondent |
Total Annual Burden Hour |
Hourly Wage Rate* |
Respondent Cost |
Individuals |
19 |
$39.46 |
$749.74 |
Total |
19 |
|
$749.74 |
There are no additional costs.
The annual cost to the federal government is $133,670.80 (Table A.14-1). Federal personnel will oversee the development of the survey instrument and data analysis plan, connect the contractor to the appropriate contacts for implementation, and review reports. The contractor is responsible for drafting the survey instrument, structured interview protocol, and data analysis plan; daily maintenance, tracking, and troubleshooting support when the survey has been deployed; conduct of the structured interviews; data analysis; and preparation of reports.
Staff |
Grade/Step |
Salary** |
% of Effort |
Fringe (if applicable) |
Total Cost to Gov’t |
Federal Oversight |
|
|
|
|
|
Task Order Monitor |
14/8 |
$141,328 |
10% |
|
$14,132.80 |
Contractor Cost |
|
|
|
|
$119,538.00 |
Travel |
|
|
|
|
$0 |
Other Cost |
|
|
|
|
$0 |
Total |
|
|
|
|
$ 133,670.80 |
N/A
This collection will not be published, and no complex analytical techniques will be used as this is a qualitative data collection. We plan to begin the data collection of audiences requiring clearance in October 2018 or as soon as possible. The structured interview data will be collected until 16 participants have been interviewed. Data will be analyzed using simple descriptive statistics. A report for internal NCI use will be submitted based on the results. The duration of the full project should be between 4-6 months after project initiation.
We are not requesting an exemption to the display of the OMB Expiration date.
This survey will comply with the requirements in 5 CFR 1320.9.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Sarah Ward |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-20 |