MEMORANDUM
Date: May 4, 2007
To: Shellie Wilkie Martinez, Desk Officer
Office of Management and Budget
From: Lynda T. Carlson, Director
Science Resources Statistics Division
Via: Suzanne Plimpton, Clearance Officer
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Subject: Notification of data collection under generic clearance
The purpose of this memorandum is to inform you of NSF’s plan to conduct a brief survey of workshop participants under the generic clearance for survey improvement projects (OMB #3145-0174). This activity is associated with the NSF Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges.
The Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges is a Congressionally mandated survey conducted annually since 1973. The survey collects information on the amount of research and development (R&D) expenditures at colleges and universities in the United States. NSF has recently begun a three-year effort to evaluate and redesign the survey. The goals of the redesign are to update the survey instrument to ensure we are obtaining the most valid and reliable measurements of the amount of academic research activity in science and engineering fields in the U.S, and to evaluate the need to expand the scope of data collected beyond that of R&D expenditures. A data users workshop will be an initial step to guide the design of future activities for the redesign project.
The data users’ workshop will be held in Arlington, VA on June 27, 2007. Approximately 40 individuals from the federal, state and local, academic, and private sectors who are users of the academic R&D survey data will be invited to attend this one-day workshop on data needs. In order to better inform the workshop discussion areas, we would like to send the workshop invitees the attached brief survey regarding their data use and needs. It will be sent three weeks prior to the workshop.
An e-mail form will be used to collect data from the 40 workshop invitees. The e-mail will ask respondents to complete an attached questionnaire asking about their data needs. A copy of the instrument is attached as Appendix A.
As soon as clearance is obtained, we will e-mail the questionnaire to the workshop invitees with a request for response by June 7, 2007.
We expect an 80 percent response rate to the e-mail questionnaire, which equals roughly 32 individuals. We expect each response to require 30 minutes. Therefore, we estimate a total of approximately 16 hours of respondent burden (i.e., 32*30 minutes = 960 minutes divided by 60 minutes = 16 hours).
There are no incentive payments.
The contact person for questions regarding this data collection is:
Ronda Britt
Project Manager
Academic Research and Development Expenditures Survey
Science Resources Statistics Division
National Science Foundation
703-292-7765
Attachments
cc: Fran Featherston
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | MEMORANDUM |
| Author | LCHRISTO |
| Last Modified By | Ronda Britt |
| File Modified | 2007-05-02 |
| File Created | 2007-05-01 |