Distracted Driving Generic Clearance

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 2127-0682)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Focus Groups for Assessment of

Creative Concepts Supporting a National No-Texting-While-Driving Campaign

PURPOSE:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was authorized by the Highway Safety Act of 1966 to carry out a Congressional mandate to reduce the mounting number of deaths, injuries and economic losses resulting from motor vehicle crashes on our Nation’s highways. In support of this mission, NHTSA is developing a new paid and earned media communications campaign to be implemented in April 2020 to help reduce the number of texting while driving distraction-affected vehicle crashes. According to data collected and reported by NHTSA:

• Answering a text takes away your attention for about five seconds. Traveling at 55 mph, that's enough time to travel the length of a football field.

• Texting while driving causes a 400 percent increase in time spent with eyes off the road.

• Of all cell phone related tasks, texting is by far the most dangerous activity.

• 94 percent of drivers support a ban on texting while driving.

• 74 percent of drivers support a ban on hand-held cell phone use.

• 94 percent of teen drivers acknowledge the dangers of texting and driving, but 35% admit to doing it anyway.

These fatatalities are preventable if drivers are informed, reminded and influenced to stop this deadly driving behavior. Therefore an integral part of NHTSA’s communications campaign is development of an effective creative concept to support a message that distracted driving due to texting while driving is a risky, ticketable, and potentially deadly activity. For assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of creative messaging concept alternatives, NHTSA seeks to use a qualitative research methodology in the form of focus groups. For NHTSA campaigns in the past, focus groups have provided an important role in gathering feedback about creative concepts because the groups allow for a more in-depth understanding of drivers’ attitudes, beliefs, motivations, and feelings than do quantitative studies. Focus groups serve the narrowly defined need for direct and informal opinions on a specific topic.

NHTSA proposes conducting six general market focus groups among drivers who are ages 18 to 34. People in all six groups would self-report recent texting while driving. In addition, NHTSA proposes conducting two focus groups among Spanish-reliant drivers between the ages of 18-34.

For the six total general market focus groups, two groups will be conducted in each of three cities: Alexandria, VA; Los Angeles, CA; Schaumburg (Chicago), IL, while the two focus groups for Spanish-reliant Hispanics will be conducted in Los Angeles, CA. While texting and driving is prevalent in nearly every community across the nation, these three cities provide sufficiently large populations to accommodate the recruiting specifications, as well as locally-based, research industry-accredited resources for efficient recruiting and facilitation of focus groups.

Focus groups will play an important role in gathering this information because they allow for more in-depth understanding of people’s attitudes, beliefs, and motivations than do other kinds of studies. If such information is not collected, it will be more difficult and less cost-effective for NHTSA to develop and distribute potentially life-saving messages to its target audience. 

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

Focus group respondents will correspond to the campaign’s primary target audience: female and male drivers ages 18 to 34 who self-report texting while driving two or more times in the previous week. Eight groups will be conducted (six general market and two Spanish-reliant), each composed of seven to nine pre-screened individuals matching that profile. Each group is projected to last 90 minutes in duration. (This total time is a combination of an “arrive early” window of 15 minutes plus 75-minute focus group session (but is exclusive of the 5-minute screening/recruiting time that’s noted in the BURDEN HOURS section on the fourth page). Although no more than nine participants will be seated for each group, twelve people will be recruited for each group in anticipation of at least nine showing, and given the target market profiles for this effort. Even with advance confirmations from qualified recruits, the sensitive nature of the subject matter for this research necessitates the higher number of recruits. Should more than nine arrive on time, only nine will be seated in the group, and the others will be released.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

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

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

[X] 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 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: ___Susan McMeen __________________________________________

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 No

3. If Yes, has an up-to-date System of Records Notice (SORN) been published? [ ] Yes ] No

Gifts or Payments:

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

Each respondent will be provided with $75 following her/his participation in a focus group session. This amount is in line with the industry standard, relative to focus group participation by people in the target market. These industry-standard stipends help to ensure that respondents can be recruited efficiently and ensure their arrival and participation in the groups. These standards exist to provide fair compensation for costs incurred by participants while attending groups, based on the location of and expenses in each market. Pre-screened and invited respondents who arrive on time but are released prior to the group will also be awarded their stipends (also in keeping with marketing research industry standards).

BURDEN HOURS (this section starts on next page)

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	Number of Respondents per Category	Participation Time	Total Burden Hours (Number of Respondents x Participation Time)
Unqualified/Refusal Respondents: Individuals who will be contacted, but screened out or refuse participation	2,000	5 minutes	166.6
Qualified & Confirmed-Acceptance Repondents Who Participate: Individuals who will meet screening criteria, accept participation, and participate in full group sessions	72	95 minutes 5 minutes screening + 15 minutes pre-group arrival + 75 minutes group discussion	114.0
Qualified & Accepted “No-Shows” or “Released-Shows”: Individuals who meet screening criteria and are accepted, but either do not show up for the group; or show up and are released prior to start of group	24	20 minutes for “Released-Shows”; (-0- minutes for “No-Shows”) 5 minutes screening + 15 minutes pre-group arrival (for burden hours calculation, assumption is all individuals are “Released-Shows”)	8.0
Totals	2,096		288.6 hours

TOTAL BURDEN HOURS: 288.6 hours

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $89,782.00.

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

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?

Each focus group facility in each city does the recruiting on behalf of NHTSA and NHTSA’s contractor, Stratacomm, as described in the screener.  Each facility’s recruiting staff works primarily from a pool within its proprietary database of people in that marketplace who have previously submitted demographic, lifestyle and product preference information.  Upon receipt of a screener such as the one for this project, the recruitment manager at the focus group facility will filter the database to search for potential respondents in the designated age group (and any other relevant specs if the firm happens to have one or more of those other criteria established in the database).  Then the recruiters will use telephone calls to those potential respondents to administer the full screener.

 

In any given household, only one person will be screened and confirmed.

 

After going through the database, if the recruiters can't fill the specified total numbers and/or quotas, the secondary step is procuring sample from any of numerous national sample providers of names, addresses and phone numbers.  The recruiters will then make phone calls to this list until the recruiting is completed.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[X] 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.

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