State Trade Expansion Program (STEP)

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for SBA Customer
Experience Data Collections”
(OMB Control Number: 3245-0404)
TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Small Business Administration
(SBA) State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) Outcomes Evaluation –
Grantee Interviews and Focus Groups
PURPOSE:

What are you hoping to learn / improve? How do you plan to use what you
learn? Include any artifacts your team may develop as a result of this
collection.

The State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) is a competitive grants
program that provides financial awards to state and territory
governments to assist small businesses with export development.
SBA has contracted an evaluation team from 2M Research to
conduct interviews and focus groups with current and former STEP
grantees for the SBA to understand program implementation and
identify best practices that may improve client outcomes.
TYPE OF ACTIVITY: (Check one)
[X ] Customer Research
[ ] Customer Feedback Survey

(if selecting this option, include survey instrument

tool with this submission)

[

] User Testing of Services and Digital Products

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY
1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)
[ ] Web-based surveys
[X] Telephone interviews and focus groups
[ ] In-person
[ ] Mail
For Customer Feedback Survey:
Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate for the Federal
program / service to connect with. Do you somehow have a list of customers to
reach out to (e.g., email addresses of individuals who have visited a service
center in the past month)? Please provide a description of how you plan to
identify your potential group of respondents and if only a sample will be
solicited for feedback, how you will select them.

DESCRIPTION OF INSTRUMENTS

Generally describe the information collection activity – e.g. will
facilitators or interviewers be used? What will respondents be asked? Or,
what actions will you observe / how will you have respondents interact with a
product you need feedback on?

A senior analyst from the evaluation team will conduct 1-hour,
semi-structured Microsoft Teams interviews with a purposive
sample of 10 STEP grantees and will conduct two 1-hour Microsoft
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Teams focus groups with up to 12 additional grantees who did not
participate in interviews. Focus groups will be open on a firstcome, first-serve basis. The evaluation team used grantee report
data, interviews with SBA STEP program leadership and grants
managers, and SBA’s initial interviews with high performing STEP
grantees to design the protocols and draw the proposed sample of
high- and low-performing grantees for the interviews. Interviews
and focus groups will be recorded provided permission is
received from all participants; a notetaker will also join each
call to serve as a backup to the transcription.
The evaluation team will use discussion guides for the
interviews and focus groups that ask for the grantees’
perspective of STEP, the process for implementing STEP grants in
the grantees’ states, the grantees’ work with small businesses,
perspectives on the impact of the program in the grantees’
states, and recommendations for SBA. The focus group discussion
guide is designed to be more amenable to group discussion;
however, the topics in both formats are the same.
Gifts or Payments:
Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token
of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [ X ] No
BURDEN HOURS
Per individual respondent, we estimate 70 minutes for
participation, which includes both recruitment time and response
time. Total burden hours for individuals participating in the
interviews and focus groups is 11.7 hours and 14 hours,
respectively, for a total of 25.7 hours.
Category of Respondent
Individuals (STEP grantee interview
participants)
Individuals (STEP grantee focus group
participants)
Totals

No. of
Responden
ts
10

Participat
ion Time*

Burden

70 minutes

12

70 minutes

11.7
hours
14 hours

22

1,540
25.7
minutes
hours
*Participation time includes recruitment time and response time.

CERTIFICATION:
I certify the following to be true:
1. The collections are voluntary;
2. The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on
considerations of total burden hours or burden-hours per
respondent) and are low-cost for both the respondents and the
Federal Government;
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APPENDIX: Data Collection Materials and Preliminary Version of
Interviews and Surveys
All instruments used to collect information must include:
OMB Control No. 3245-0404
Expiration Date: 02/28/2021

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