Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services Formula Grantees Performance Progress Report (PPR) Listening Sessions

MITRE-OFVPS Reporting Form Recipient Listening Session Guide – States and Territories

Agenda
Topic	Facilitator	Time: 60 minutes total
Welcome and Brief Introductions/Icebreaker		10 minutes
Questions: Section 1 – Current Data Reporting and Collection Section 2 – Reporting Challenges and Barriers Section 3 – Reporting Opportunities and Future Focus		15 minutes 15 minutes 15 minutes
Wrap-Up/Next Steps		5 minutes

Overview of Listening Session Question Sections
Section 1 – Current Data Reporting and Collection	This section aims to gather information on methods used to report and collect data. Emphasis is on methods and data collected from subrecipients.
Section 2 – Reporting Challenges and Barriers	This section aims to understand challenges and barriers faced when completing reporting forms. Specific to the work of States, probes focus on challenges and barriers to collecting complete secondary data from subrecipients, as well as any work supporting people with disabilities, culturally specific populations, and underserved communities.
Section 3 – Reporting Opportunities and Future Focus	This section aims to explore what participants and survivors would like OFVPS/Congress to know and what changes participants would like to see made to the forms.

Welcome and Background

MITRE:

Hi everyone! We will wait a couple more minutes for people to join.

Good morning/afternoon, and welcome everyone!

Thank you for joining us today for this listening session.

My name is _[name]____________, and I am a _[researcher or title]__ with the MITRE Corporation.

My team and I are facilitating this listening session on behalf of the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services (referred to in this conversation as OFVPS) team. MITRE is an independent, not for profit company that operates six Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. We work together with government sponsors to solve critical problems, and provide technical expertise and unbiased advice.

The team members with me today are [names], who will be listening and taking notes to make sure that I don’t miss anything important.

During this session, I will ask questions about: 

• Your current data reporting and collection processes

• Challenges and barriers you experience completing the OFVPS Performance Progress Report (PPR) form

• Opportunities for future reporting and changes to the OFVPS Performance Progress Report form

A blank copy of the PPR was attached to this meeting invitation. We invite you to pull the form up to help guide your answers during this session.

Housekeeping and Disclaimer

Housekeeping

We’ll start our meeting with some housekeeping in a moment and then jump right into the discussion. Here you can see our full agenda of topics for the session [refer to slide].

Before we get into the discussion, we’d like to review some best practices to ensure we allow for a dynamic discussion while also ensuring everyone is able to participate and provide meaningful input.

• To optimize your meeting experience, please log in to Zoom through the app rather than dialing in.

• We encourage you to have your video on but understand there are many reasons why you might prefer to keep it off, and we fully support your choice. Please join the way that suits you best.

• Please introduce yourself when speaking and answering questions.

• Feel free to use the Zoom “raise hand” and chat functions to participate. We will do our best to ensure that everyone who wants to contribute to the conversation has the opportunity to share.

• Please keep your microphones muted while you are not speaking to prevent background noise.

• To allow everyone to participate in the time we have together, we ask that you be mindful of making space for others to share their ideas and offer their feedback.

• Attendees and facilitators introduce themselves.

Disclaimer  

[MITRE Facilitator reads]:

[OMB approval language]

Please note that participation in these listening sessions is completely voluntary and you may leave the call at any point. The estimated time for this session will be 60 minutes. Your participation in these listening sessions (or decision to not participate) will not affect your grant funding in any way. Personally identifiable information collected will be only “business card information,” i.e., respondents’ first and last names, email addresses, and institutional affiliations.  MITRE plans to record today’s session for internal notetaking purposes only. Once we have verified our notes, we will destroy the recording. We will not attribute anything you share during this session to you or to your organization in the recommendations report we are preparing for OFVPS. Does anyone have any objections to MITRE recording this conversation? [If there are no objections, notetaker hits the record button. If there are any objections, the MITRE team will aim to capture more verbatim notes]. Any questions before we get started?

Discussion Section 1 – Current Data Reporting and Collection

• What is the most important data you collect about your subrecipients’ work?

  • Probe: What specific activities do you collect data on?

  • Probe: How frequently is this data collected, and where is it stored?

  • Probe: What challenges do you face in your work or do your subrecipients’ face, that you feel are important to capture?

• What methods do you use to collect data from subrecipients?

  • Probe: What approaches work well to gather data on your subrecipients’ programs?

  • Probe: Tell me about the tools (e.g., excel spreadsheet, other applications) you use to track your subrecipients’ work.

• Regarding the information and data you collect about your subrecipients’ work, do you find it easy to answer the questions asked in the reporting form?

  • Probe: How does the data you collect align with the reporting form requirements?  

• How do you track the work that subrecipients plan to complete versus the work that is completed?

  • Probe: How can the reporting form be revised to accurately represent their planned activities as well as completed activities?

• [Facilitator screen shares OMB-approved SPD 15 language] Looking at this chart, tell us which parts you would be able to fill in based on your current data collection process? What would you need to change about your process to collect this data?

  • Mandatory Probe: What training and/or technical assistance would be helpful?

Discussion Section 2 – Reporting Challenges and Barriers

• Which sections of the reporting form do you find most unclear or difficult to complete? 

  • Probe: Looking at the current reporting form, tell me about anything that is confusing to you (examples: definitions, calculations, instructions).

  • Probe: Is there any information you currently include in the narrative responses that could be expressed in specific data checklists or fill-in boxes?

  • Probe: Are there topics from your subrecipients’ work that need more space for narrative responses?

• What challenges do you have describing the work your subrecipients do in the current reporting form (examples: definitions, instructions, and/or calculations)?

  • Probe: Related to those challenges, is there anything about the reporting form that could be updated to make completion easier? 

  • Probe: What challenges and barriers do you face collecting data about your subrecipients’ work? How does this impact the ability to report accurate and complete data?

  • Probe: Can you tell us about your subrecipients’ efforts around primary prevention (e.g., community education)? What do you think is most important to relay to OFVPS and Congress? 

    • Additional Probe: Which specific curriculum/curricula do you use for prevention efforts?

  • Probe: Which activities would you like to describe more in the reporting form?

    • Additional Probe: Is there any work your subrecipients do for people with disabilities, culturally specific, or underserved communities that you would like to see included on the reporting form?

Discussion Section 3 – Reporting Opportunities and Future Focus

• What would you like Congress and/or the OFVPS program management team to know about your subrecipients’ work?

• What do you think survivors want Congress to know about their experiences with FVPSA-funded programs?    

  • Probe: In sections F (Narrative Responses) and G (Service Outcome Data), do you think survivor outcomes are adequately captured? [Provide brief descriptions of the questions if needed—see below]

    • Note for Facilitators: Section F in the PPR form is for narrative responses. For example, the first questions asks, “For services supported in whole or in part by your FVPSA grant, share a story about a client (without sharing any personally identifying information), service or community initiative that could be shared with other stakeholders.”

    • Note for Facilitators: Section G is for service outcome data asking to enter information such as “survey type” and “number of surveys completed.”   

  • Probe: How can the form be changed to better tell survivor stories?

• If you had a magic wand, what changes would you make to the reporting form?

  • Probe: What do you wish the reporting form asked you?

  • Probe: Are there any parts of the reporting form that you find beneficial and believe should be further developed?  

  • Probe: How can the form be organized to streamline the reporting process for you? 

  • Probe: Are there any best practices or examples from other reporting forms that you recommend adding?  

  • Probe: How can the form be modified to minimize the time and effort needed to complete it?  

Wrap Up and Next Steps

• Before we wrap up, is there anything else I should have asked, or you’d like to share?

Thank participants for their time. Explain the timeline for next steps (including providing asynchronous feedback) and remind them that their feedback will be synthesized and shared back with OFVPS to make recommendations to reporting form design. Stop recording if the session was recorded.

Post Meeting and Internal Team Roles

Primary Facilitator: Leads the discussion during the listening sessions using the guide and incorporates probing questions as needed. Primary facilitator will secure access to a premium Zoom account (enables longer meetings, more participants, etc.).

Secondary Facilitator: Supports the primary facilitator by monitoring the chat. The secondary facilitator also serves as backup in the event the primary facilitator is unavailable or experiences technical difficulties. Secondary facilitator will secure access to a premium Zoom account (enables longer meetings, more participants, etc.).

Primary Notetaker: Captures relevant information and content during the listening session. Primary notetaker will also share their screen, record the session, and save chat history and transcript before closing out of Zoom. After the listening session, uploads the documents to MITRE SharePoint site and cleans up the notes ahead of high-level analysis. Uploads meeting notes to MITRE SharePoint site one to two days after the listening session with the naming convention “Listening Session X Notes_YYMMDD.”

Secondary Notetaker: Supports the primary notetaker by capturing relevant information and content during the listening sessions. Secondary notetaker also serves as backup in the event the primary notetaker is unavailable or experiences technical difficulties.

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