Supporting Statement for Questionnaire and Small Group Discussion for National Science Foundation (NSF) Water, Sustainability, a

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of
Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 3145-0215)
TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Questionnaire and Small Group Discussion for
National Science Foundation (NSF) Water, Sustainability, and Climate (WSC) Program Grantees
PURPOSE: The National Science Foundation intends to leverage the January 29, 2018, Water,
Sustainability, and Climate Program Principal Investigator (PI) Convening to collect information
through written questionnaires and facilitated small group discussions with project staff from
WSC’s approximately 20 active projects participating in the meeting.
One of the most urgent challenges facing the world today is to ensure an adequate supply and
quality of water in light of both burgeoning human needs and increasing climate variability.
Despite the importance of water to life on Earth, there are major gaps in our basic understanding
of water availability, quality and dynamics, and the impact of both human activity and a variable
climate on the water system. The goal of the Water Sustainability and Climate (WSC) program
was to enhance the understanding and predict the interactions between the water system and land
use changes (including agriculture, managed forest and rangeland systems), the built
environment, ecosystem function and services and climate variability through place-based
research and integrative environmental models.
The purpose of the written questionnaire and facilitated small group discussions is to gain
information from project staff at various stages of their careers (e.g., research faculty,
postdoctoral fellows, graduate students) about the following: implementation of their WSCfunded projects; unanticipated challenges and opportunities they have encountered and
adjustments in the anticipated activities or outcomes; perspectives of individual and collective
progress toward advancing the field of environmental modeling; and continued or emerging
needs in environmental modeling that would benefit from coordinated implementation efforts by
the research communities participating in WSC.
The collection will inform adjustments and improvements in program design, respective vehicles
that convey funding opportunities, (e.g., program solicitations, Dear Colleague Letters, etc.), and
strategy for outreach to and community-building activities to relevant research communities. By
gathering information through facilitated small group discussion, the information collection may
serve to simultaneously catalyze opportunities for networking, collaboration, and early
coordination of future research activities among the research community members that
participate.
DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS: Respondents are ~35 PIs and junior project staff (e.g.,
postdoctoral fellows and graduate students) representing ~20 WSC projects that are participating
in the January 29, 2018, WCS PI Convening in Washington, D.C. All 35 PIs and junior project
staff in attendance will be invited to participate in a short questionnaire and facilitated small
group discussion. The information collection will occur during a facilitated 65 minutes of
sessions.
TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)
[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form
[ ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software
[ ] Focus Group

[ ] Customer Satisfaction Survey
[ X] Small Discussion Group
[ X] Other: Questionnaire

1

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 non-controversial 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: Suzanne H. Plimpton, NSF Reports Clearance Officer
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, will any information that is collected be included in records that are subject to the
Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ X ] No
3. If Yes, has an up-to-date System of Records Notice (SORN) been published? [ ]Yes [X ] 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
Category of Respondent
Individuals (questionnaire)
Individuals (small group discussion and share out)

No. of
Respondents
35
35

Totals

35

Participation
Time
5 minutes each
30 minutes
each for 2
sessions
65 minutes
each

Burden
3 hours
35 hours

38 hours

FEDERAL COST: This will be incorporated into the plans of running the program.
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?
[X ] Yes
[ ]No

2

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If
the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of
respondents and how you will select them?
Respondents will be a convenience sample that emerges from self-selected participation of
individuals from among the ~35 PIs and junior project staff (e.g., postdoctoral fellows and
graduate students) representing ~20 WSC projects that are participating in the January 29, 2018
WCS PI Convening in Washington, D.C.
Administration of the Instrument
1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)
[ ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media
[ ] Telephone
[X] In-person
[ ] Mail
[ ] Other, Explain
2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [X] Yes [ ] No
Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the
request.

3

To be read by each small group discussion facilitator:
My name is [DISCUSSION FACILITATOR] and I am a [POSITION TITLE] in the [OFFICE NAME]. I am
collaborating with the Water, Sustainability, and Climate (WSC) program to learn about WSC
project members’ perspectives of and experiences with implementing their project, how they
view the collective progress made by the WSC community, and what issues they think are
important for the WSC community to consider moving forward. We invite you to participate in
a short questionnaire and a facilitated small group discussion with project team members’
other WSC projects. Your participation is completely voluntary. You may choose not to
participate, or may stop participating at any time.
The purpose of the written questionnaire is to gather individuals’ perspectives of and
experiences with implementing a WSC project. The questionnaire will take five minutes of your
time and can be completed before or after the small group discussion.
In the small group discussion we hope to learn how you view the collective progress made by
the WSC community and to facilitate cross-project conversation about continued or emerging
needs for the WSC community to address. The small group discussion is part of a 90 minutes of
organized sessions during the WSC PI meeting. Each of the three small groups in the room will
have an opportunity to share key ideas from their discussion with the other small groups
toward the end of the session.
My colleague [NAME OF NOTETAKER] will be taking notes on the small group discussion. After
the session, we will provide WSC with the completed questionnaires, charts, and typed notes.
No individuals will be identified.
The information will inform programmatic improvements and adjustments to documents that
convey funding opportunities (e.g., program solicitations, Dear Colleague Letters, etc.) as well
as improvements in the program’s outreach to and community-building activities with the
environmental modeling community. We hope the small group discussions may also catalyze
opportunities for networking, collaboration, and coordination of future research activities
among the research community members that participate.
Our collection of information through the questionnaire and small group discussion have been
reviewed and approved under OMB Control Number3145-0215.
Do you have any questions before we begin?

4

Part A: Written Questionnaire (5 minutes)
1. Considering WSC as a research focus:
a. What do you find interesting?
b. What do you find challenging?
2. In what ways (if any) were your enacted WSC project activities and/or outcomes
different than those originally proposed? What were the reason(s) for these
differences?
3. VERSION A: If you are a Faculty Researcher on the WSC project: In what way(s) has
your WSC experience influenced your laboratory or research focus, if at all?
VERSION B: If you are a Graduate Researcher or Postdoctoral Researcher the WSC
project: In what way(s) has your WSC experience influenced your views of or goals in
science, if at all?
4. What do you consider the greatest insight (take-home message) of the WSC project?
Part B: Small Group Discussion (30 minutes)
1. Give an example of how you think WSC has influenced “environmental science” in each
of the following areas:
a. Changing the nature or focus of questions posed
b. Adding new, or novel ways of incorporating existing, frameworks and methods
c. Changing the nature or focus of graduate student and postdoctoral training
d. Adding new undergraduate course content
e. Changing the nature or focus of community outreach
f. Adding new, or novel ways of incorporating existing, cyberinfrastructure for
data gathering, long-term data access, or computation
2. In what ways (if any) has WSC prepared you for future projects including possibilities
under “Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS)”?
3. Given the legacy of WSC and the continued activity of INFEWS, does the field need to
continue in this direction and why?
4. What improvements in the process or use of environmental modelling are needed?
Why?
5. What are the next great challenges in environmental modelling? Why are they
important?
Part C: Small Group Share Out (30 minutes)
• Each of the three small groups has ~10 minutes to share out key ideas from their
discussion with the members of the other two small groups and initiate whole group
discussion of those ideas (if desired).

5