Cover Memo_OAR

DATE: May 19, 2011

TO: Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Through: Mary Forbes, Reports Clearance Officer, HHS

Seleda Perryman, Program Clearance Officer, OPERA, NIH

Vivian Horovitch-Kelley, PRA OMB Project Clearance Liaison, OMAA, NCI

FROM: Shannon Bell, Director

Office of Advocacy Relations

National Cancer Institute (NCI)/NIH

SUBJ: A Generic Submission for Formative Research, Pre-testing, Stakeholder Measures and Advocate Forms at NCI

This is a request for OMB to approve this new generic submission package on behalf of the NCI Office of Advocacy Relations (OAR), titled “A Generic Submission for Formative Research, Pre-testing, Stakeholder Measures and Advocate Forms at NCI” for three years.

In order to carry out NCI’s legislative mandate, the Office of Advocacy Relations disseminates cancer-related information to a variety of stakeholders, seeks their input and feedback, and facilitates collaboration between the Institute and these external partners to advance NCI’s authorized programs. It is beneficial for NCI, through the OAR, to pretest strategies, concepts, activities, and materials while they are under development. This pre-testing, or formative evaluation, helps ensure that the products and services developed by NCI have the greatest capacity of being received, understood, and accepted by their target audiences. The formative research and pretesting process thus contributes to maximizing NCI’s limited dollar resources for information dissemination and education. OAR is also responsible for matching advocates to NCI programs and initiatives across the cancer continuum, it necessary to measure the satisfaction of both internal and external stakeholders with this collaboration. This customer satisfaction research helps ensure the relevance, utility, and appropriateness of the many initiatives and products that OAR and NCI produce. In addition to collecting information for research and customer service, OAR will request information from advocates in order to match them appropriately to NCI activities based on their interest and experience.

Approval is requested for information collection of advocate forms and multiple studies using such methods as interviews, focus groups, and various types of surveys. The content, timing, and number of respondents to be included in each sub-study will vary, depending on the nature of the message/material/program being assessed, the methodology selected, and the target audiences. Total burden to respondents is estimated at 3,675 hours for three years (or an average of 1,225 hours per year).