PSCR 2020 Participant Survey Supporting Statement

OMB Control #0693-0031

Expiration: 06/30/2021

PSCR 2020 PARTICIPANT SURVEY

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

The program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supporting the survey

is the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) division. PSCR works with first responders and public safety officials to help identify and execute research goals to improve public safety communications technologies. PSCR hosts an annual public safety broadband stakeholder meeting that brings together representatives from public safety, federal agencies, industry, and academia. Participants hear from PSCR engineers and researchers about testing updates, upcoming research and development (R&D) efforts, and opportunities to get involved. PSCR invites industry leaders and public safety partners to present cutting-edge technology findings, features, and functionalities. The Annual Stakeholder Meeting enables PSCR to receive direct input, guidance, and feedback from their diverse stakeholder community. This year, the annual meeting will be held in a completely virtual format and be known as PSCR 2020: The Digital Experience. This survey will target PSCR 2020 registered participants for feedback regarding their satisfaction with the experience overall, comparison to the in-person event, and suggestions for improvement. Soliciting this information from our participants is appropriate as they will have engaged with the content presented as part of PSCR 2020 and will help PSCR capture data to enhance future stakeholder engagement and research sharing efforts.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties,

pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

The PSCR 2020 participant survey was developed, first by referencing a general, PRA approved Conference Services survey as a base. Our team then assessed what data would be helpful to collect for the improvement of future virtual and/or in-person events, while consulting our NIST sponsor, Dereck Orr, throughout the process. Using the Conference Services survey and considering the data our team needs to collect, we customized our own survey with 14 questions. Several people on our team, as well as our NIST sponsor, have tested the functionality of the survey. Our NIST sponsor provided suggestions for improvement to enhance the user experience and to better fulfill the purpose of the survey, all of which were incorporated into the final version attached.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than

all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to

take to improve the response rate.

The survey will be distributed as a Google Form to all individuals who are signed up for PSCR 2020: The Digital Experience by the date and time the survey is fielded. PSCR anticipates roughly 700 individuals to sign up for PSCR 2020. The form will be sent to registered participants via email. Respondent names and contact information will not be collected. It is not required or mandatory for participants of PSCR 2020 to complete the survey, but we will encourage them to complete it and provide us with feedback throughout the launch of PSCR 2020. Based on the most recent Conference Services feedback collection from the 2019 Annual Stakeholder Meeting, we anticipate a response rate of around 19.5%. For a statistically significant sample, our goal is to collect a minimum of 75 responses. If needed, to improve the response rate, PSCR will send a follow up ‘reminder’ email one to two weeks after initial outreach to only those registered participants who have not yet completed the survey.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results

to the entire customer population.

The results of the survey will be analyzed to develop an after-event report and to improve future virtual and/or in-person PSCR stakeholder events. By distributing this survey, PSCR will be able to review audience satisfaction according to each type of session provided via PSCR 2020, user experience factors of an innovative virtual platform, and a comparison of past in-person Stakeholder Meetings to this year’s digital experience for those who have attended both. Using this information, PSCR can make informed decisions for the future, determining what kind of sessions may best be held in an in-person meeting versus a virtual format. As was done with the results of the 2019 Stakeholder Meeting survey, we will examine and synthesize feedback from this group – which is likely to be the most engaged segment of the entire PSCR customer population – and apply our findings to sweeping programmatic decisions involving future conference design, messaging, branding and engagement.