ATSDR Communication Activities Survey (ACAS)
OMB Control No. 0923-NEW
New Information Collection Request
Supporting Statement – Part B
Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods
Project Officer
Januett Smith-George
Sr. Program Management Officer
Division of Community Health Investigations
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
4770 Buford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30341
Office: 770.488.0719
Email: [email protected]
Date: June 12, 2017
B.1. Respondent Universe and Sampling Methods 3
B.2. Procedures for the Collection of Information 5
B.3. Methods to Maximize Response Rates and Deal with No Response 8
B.4. Test of Procedures or Methods to be Undertaken 8
B.5. Individuals Consulted on Statistical Aspects and Individuals Collecting and/or Analyzing Data 9
Part B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods
Respondent Universe and Sampling Methods
The goal is to recruit a convenience sample of about 167 community members (e.g., general public, community leaders, faith-based leaders, business leaders, etc.) and agency stakeholders (e.g., state and local environmental health department employees, such as environmental health assessors, toxicologists, and agency officials), approximately 24-28 individuals at each of six to seven selected sites per year. These sites must have the potential for a harmful exposure to a population of at least 500 people. ATSDR will select the sites as they near the end of agency site activities. Based on these criteria of population size, chemical exposure, and timing of activities, these sites may not be geographically distributed across the nation at any given time; however, ATSDR will endeavor to select at least two sites per region if possible.
Recruitment will take place at public community meetings. Contractors will have a table set up at the entrance where they will hand out a fact sheet to the community meeting attendees (Attachment D) which explains what ATSDR does, and the purpose of ATSDR’s site activities and the survey. At the end of the meeting there will be an announcement to ask interested community meeting attendees to sign in with the ATSDR contractors and take the survey in the manner they prefer – in-person at the meeting, online via a SurveyMonkey® link sent by email, or over the phone.
The mix of respondents will be approximately 75 percent community members (n=125 per year) and 25 percent agency stakeholders (n=42 per year). DCHI plans to include sites from each of the regions: eastern, central, and western. As collecting data from a sub-set of the entire universe of community meeting attendees at each site is feasible, a sampling strategy will not be employed.
Sites will be selected based upon the following criteria: a community meeting is held where the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) released a site document within the past 6 months; there is an environmental hazard present at the site; and there are a large number of people potentially exposed to the hazard at the site. Table B.1.1 shows the list of sites selected for the requested three-year Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) clearance for the “ATSDR Communication Activities Survey (ACAS).”
Table B.1.1: List of Example ATSDR Sites where the ACAS may be conducted
Site Name/Location |
Number of people with harmful exposures at each site (n) |
Region |
|
5,000 |
Central |
|
1,180 |
Western |
|
345 |
Eastern |
|
250 |
Central |
|
500 |
Central |
|
250 |
Eastern |
|
100 |
Eastern |
|
1,000,000 |
Central |
|
100 |
Eastern |
|
500 |
Central |
|
125 |
Central |
|
33,000 |
Eastern |
|
500 |
Central |
|
200 |
Western |
|
40,300 |
Eastern |
|
60 |
Central |
|
40 |
Eastern |
|
22 |
Central |
|
17 |
Eastern |
|
16 |
Table B.1.2: Potential Annual Respondent Universe
Entity |
Potential Respondent |
N |
Community Members |
General public, community leaders, faith-based leaders, business leaders |
125 |
Agency Stakeholders |
State and local environmental health department employees (Environmental Health Assessors, Toxicologists, and Agency officials) |
42 |
Total Number of Potential Respondents |
167 |
|
The data collection tool is a short 28-question survey designed to answer several questions measuring a set of indicators that will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of ATSDR activities including respondent involvement, knowledge, satisfaction, observations, opinions, self-evaluation and ATSDR community engagement, interactions, and educational outreach efforts to inform communities.
The ACAS indicators below will measure ATSDR’s effectiveness in the following areas, which are mapped to the following questions:
respondent involvement with the site activities; (Question 1)
how respondent received information from ATSDR and how they prefer to receive ATSDR information; (Questions 2)
knowledge and understanding of site activities; (Questions 3-6)
knowledge of how to reduce or prevent hazardous exposures at the site; (Questions 7-9)
ATSDR contact information; (Question 10)
observations and opinions of ATSDR site activities, including ATSDR’s understanding of respondent health concerns and whether respondent thinks ATSDR gave the information they need to address their environmental-related health concerns; (Questions 11-12)
observations and opinions of the community, and the community’s ability to address environmental issues; (Question 13)
self-evaluation questions on how the respondent feels at the time of taking the survey about his or her risk of exposure to possible environmental hazards at the site; (Question 14)
demographic questions to understand the make-up of the community as an aid in tailoring messages and activities to the audience; (Questions 15-21)
environmental concerns; and (Question 22)
any additional feedback. (Question 23)
These indicators will help ATSDR ascertain the effectiveness and evaluate the differences and consistency of ATSDR activities delivery and respondent perceptions across sites and over time; determine how effectively ATSDR’s site team engages community members; and discover how well ATSDR provides effective, clear and consistent communication and information on how to promote healthy and safe environments and prevent harmful exposures through the activities they implement in communities. The survey will help ATSDR understand whether their activities are helping the communities address environmental issues and how they may improve ATSDR’s activities to make a greater impact within the communities they serve. The data will be collected only once after the public meeting, using the ACAS. This survey will be the baseline. Future administrations of the survey may be compared to this baseline.
Data will be collected via one half-hour survey administered to public community meeting attendees after the meeting has taken place in communities where agencies implement activities to address environmental issues. This is a post-only ATSDR/DCHI survey with the baseline embedded in the questions (survey questions establishes time before the community meeting and after the community meeting, as well as before ATSDR came into the community and after the agency came into the community). Eligible respondents include community members and state/local environmental public health (EPH) employees or officials at each of the six to seven annually selected sites. The goal is to recruit 24-28 participants at each site per year including community members (e.g., general public, community leaders, faith-based leaders, business leaders, etc.) and stakeholders (e.g., state and local environmental health department employees, environmental health assessors, toxicologists, and officials).
A post-only design where data is collected after the community meeting is held, takes out the need for and challenges related to retention of participants throughout the evaluation. Obtaining the information from a sub-set of the entire universe will allow DCHI to understand how to improve the impact of ATSDR’s activities in addressing environmental issues in the communities they serve. The mix of respondents will be approximately n=125 community members per year (75%) and n=42 stakeholders per year (25%).
Contractors will have a table set up at the entrance where community meeting attendees will pick up the fact sheet which explains what ATSDR does, and the purpose of ATSDR presence and the survey (Attachment C). Recruitment will take place at the end of the meeting. At the end of the public community meeting, there will be an announcement to ask all interested respondents to give their contact information on a sign-in sheet (Attachment E1), specify whether they are a community member or stakeholder, and if they prefer to take the survey in-person, online, or by phone. The information on the sign in sheet will only be used to recruit and contact ACAS participants and for no other purpose. Written consent will not be administered. The fact sheet, sign in sheet, and the first page of the ACAS will explain how respondents are asked to give voluntary consent. They will indicate they are 18 years of age or older and consent to participate in the survey by proceeding to answer questions on the survey.
ACAS will preferably be self-administered by hardcopy (Attachment F1), right after the public community meeting and then trained contractors will manually enter responses into SurveyMonkey® and Stata® statistical software. If this not a convenient time for the participant, the ACAS may be completed online via SurveyMonkey® link (Attachment F2), or by telephone (Attachment F3).
We estimate approximately 80 percent of respondents will choose the self-administered hardcopy ACAS (n=100 community members and n=34 agency stakeholders per year), 15 percent will choose the online ACAS (n=19 community members and n=6 agency stakeholders per year), and 5 percent will choose the telephone ACAS (n=6 community members and n=2 agency stakeholders per year).
The survey data collection tool was prepared by ATSDR staff. The data will be collected and maintained by ATSDR contractors. Trained contractors will recruit, obtain consent from respondents, and administer the survey once per respondent after each community meeting in-person, or send an email link for an online survey, or administer the survey over the phone. Data analysis of the survey findings and reporting including a draft document for internal and external dissemination will be conducted by contractors as well. Stata® statistical package will be used for managing, analyzing, and graphing data.
Sites that usually have high participation rates at community meetings, or with medium to high involvement are part of the criteria for document selection. Sites with medium involvement have anywhere from 10-15 individuals of interest whereas a high involvement site would have a minimum of 16 individuals. This will improve response rates so that each site has 24-28 participants.
An email containing the link to take the survey (Attachment G) will be sent to those that would like to take the survey online. If the potential respondent does not take the online survey after receiving the initial email with the online survey link, they will subsequently receive an additional three reminder emails to take the survey (Attachment H), once every 2 weeks after the initial email. This will give the respondent a total of 8 weeks to take the survey. Trained contractors will attempt to contact potential respondents that prefer taking the survey over the phone, a total of four times as well. Interviewers will use the telephone script on the first page of the telephone ACAS (Attachment F3). If community members or state/local environmental health department employees or officials cannot be contacted to participate within a total of four attempts, for both online and telephone surveys, then that individual will be classified as having no information available.
In order to maximize response rates, around 200 community members and stakeholders will be approached each year to achieve a total of n=167 participants at 6 to 7 sites per year. Higher response rates will yield more reliable information; however, no scientific inferences will be made.
A community meeting was held in July 2015, in Lockhart, SC, related to the Bennett Landfill fire in Chester, SC. Eight months after this community was held, trained ATSDR contractors pilot tested the ACAS data collection tool among 5 community meeting attendees. Feedback from this group was used to refine questions, ensure accuracy, and establish the estimated time required to complete the survey.
The Introduction and Section 1 (three questions) takes an average of 5 minutes, Section 2 (seven questions) takes 5 minutes, Section 3 (two questions) takes less than an average of 5 minutes and Section 4 (one question) takes less than 5 minutes, Section 5 (one question) takes 5 minutes, Section 6 (six questions) takes around 5 minutes to complete, and Section 7 (two questions) took less than 5 minutes to complete. For the purposes of estimating burden hours, the upper limit of this range (i.e., 15 minutes) is used. In the pilot test for the survey introduction, the average time to complete was approximately 3 minutes.
Table B.5.1. Personnel Consulted on Statistical Design
Name |
Title |
Affiliation |
Phone |
|
|||
FEDERAL AGENCY |
|||||||
Matt Sones, PhD |
Lead Public Health Analyst |
ATSDR |
(770) 488-0731 |
||||
J. Smith-George, MSW |
Senior Program Management Officer |
ATSDR |
(770) 488-0719 |
||||
Sima M. Rama, MPH |
Public Health Analyst |
Northrop Grumman Corporation |
(404) 307-3320 |
||||
Jill G. Hensley |
Program Manager |
Northrop Grumman Corporation |
(240) 750-7202 |
||||
Table B.5.2. Personnel Responsible for Collection and Analysis of Information
Name |
Title |
Affiliation |
Phone |
|
Richard A. Krop, PhD |
Principal |
Cadmus |
(424) 291-7678 |
|
Rebecca Wright |
Senior Health Writer |
CommunicateHealth |
(413) 582-0425 |
|
Sarah Pomerantz, MPH, CPH |
Project Director |
CommunicateHealth |
(413) 387-1482 |
Authorizing Legislation
A1. CERCLA Authorizing Legislation
A2. RCRA Authorizing Legislation
A3. SARA Authorizing Legislation
60-day Federal Register Notice
Privacy Impact Assessment
Community Meeting Fact Sheet
Sign-In Sheet
E1. Sign-In Sheet Aid
F. ATSDR Communication Activities Survey in 3 Modes
F1. Hardcopy ACAS
F2. Online ACAS
F3. Telephone ACAS
Initial Email for Online Survey Link
Reminder Emails for Online Survey
Thank You Letter for Community Members
Research Determination
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Smith-George, Januett P. (ATSDR/DCHI/OD) |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-23 |