Request for Approval

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 0920-0974)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Customer Service Feedback Survey of 2019 EIS Conference

PURPOSE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) seeks to obtain Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval to collect feedback for the 2018 Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Conference hosted April 29– May 2, 2019. The EIS Conference is held on an annual basis for the primary purpose of providing a training experience of scientific presentation (oral or poster) for EIS officers. Overall, EIS Conference goals are to provide an opportunity for scientific exchange around current epidemiologic issues, highlight the breadth of epidemiologic investigations at CDC, and provide a venue for strengthening the EIS professional network. Additionally, the conference provides a forum for CDC and state and local health departments to recruit EIS officers for EIS host assignments, EIS graduates for leadership positions, and potential applicants for the EIS training program. CDC is requesting OMB approval to collect feedback to ensure the EIS Conference is meeting its goals and the needs of attendees. The EIS Conference program workgroup intends to use the results of this data collection to improve the logistics, communication, and quality of EIS Conference sessions when planning future conferences.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS

Respondents to the Customer Service Feedback Survey (Attachment 1, Survey in MSWord and Attachment 2, Survey Screenshots) will be 2019 EIS Conference registrants. Conference registrants come from a variety of fields. Registrants include local, state, and federal government employees, EIS officers, EIS alumni, and researchers, health care providers, health educators, policy makers, students, potential applicants to the EIS fellowship, and others. No personally identifiable information (PII) will be collected; however, if respondents provide PII, it will not be retained.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

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

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

[ ] Focus Group [ ] Other: ______________________

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 noncontroversial 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: Meagan Davis, MPH

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

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

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

BURDEN HOURS

The feedback survey will be web-based and includes 13 questions. Respondents will take approximately 4 minutes to complete the survey through the web-based Survey Monkey. The estimate for burden (hours) is based on results from a pilot version of this survey that volunteer CDC employee participants completed. The average time it took for volunteers to complete the survey, including reading the instructions, was approximately 4 minutes.

A total of 2,366 individuals registered for the 2018 EIS Conference, and 748 registrants completed the 2018 survey. Based on that number of respondents, we are seeking approval to collect feedback from approximately 800 2019 EIS Conference registrants. We plan to deploy the survey before the end of the conference and encourage all participants to complete the 2019 survey to provide feedback. In this way, we hope to increase the response rate. Given 800 respondents with a response time of 4 minutes each, the total response burden will be 53.33 hours. There will be no cost to the respondents other than their time to respond to the survey.

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Individuals	800	4/60	53.33 hours
Totals			53.33 hours

FEDERAL COST

There are no equipment or overhead costs. The average annualized cost to the Federal Government to collect this information is $1,276.00. This estimate is based on the time required for one senior CDC scientist (GS-14) to supervise and one CDC ORISE Fellow (GS-9) to design the survey, develop the web-based survey, implement the survey, analyze the data, and develop recommendations for improving the 2019 EIS Conference on the basis of survey results.

Staff or Contractor	Hours	Average Hourly Rate	Cost
Contractor (GS-9): Analyze data and report results.	20	$25.46	$509.20
FTE (GS-13): Design survey, create web-based survey, and provide guidance on data analysis. Provide feedback on the final report.	15	$43.91	$658.65
Totals	35		$1,167.85

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

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

The 2019 EIS Conference Customer Service Survey will be administered as a web-based survey. Printed and electronic flyers (Attachment 3, EIS Conference Feedback Flyer) asking conference attendees to complete the survey will be posted around the conference site and included in the 2019 EIS Conference program packet distributed to each registrant. On the last day of the conference, an invitation email (Attachment 4, Invitation Email) with a link to the survey will be sent to all 2019 EIS Conference registrants who provided an email address. Respondents will be given 2 weeks to respond to the survey. A reminder email (Attachment 5, Reminder Email) will be sent twice: one at the beginning of week 2 and one on the day that the survey closes. Respondents will have to complete the survey in one sitting. Respondents cannot return to edit or complete the survey and the survey does not track individual responses.

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

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