5 Attachment F Interview/Protocol-Workshop Participants

Attachment F:

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS’ INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

OMB No.: 0925-0046

Expiration Date: 05/31/16

Collection of this information is authorized by The Public Health Service Act, Section 411 (42 USC 285a). Rights of study participants are protected by The Privacy Act of 1974. Participation is voluntary, and there are no penalties for not participating or withdrawing from the study at any time. Refusal to participate will not affect your benefits in any way. The information collected in this study will be kept private to the extent provided by law. Names and other identifiers will not appear in any report of the study. Information provided will be combined for all study participants and reported as summaries. You are being contacted to complete this interview so that we can learn more about satisfaction with the Provocative Questions Initiative.

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 30 minutes per response, including the time for completing the interview. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: NIH, Project Clearance Branch, 6705 Rockledge Drive, MSC 7974, Bethesda, MD 20892-7974, ATTN: PRA (0925-0046).

DATE OF INTERVIEW:

LENGTH OF INTERVIEW (MINUTES):

NAME OF INTERVIEWEE:

AFFILIATION (AGENCY OR INSTITUTION):

TELEPHONE NUMBER:

E-MAIL:

PRIMARY INTERVIEWER:

SECONDARY INTERVIEWER/WRITER:

COMMENTS ON ANY UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES:

INTRODUCTION

Hello, _________________. My name is _________________ and I am a member of the assessment team working with the Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives (CSSI) within the National Cancer Institute (NCI). We are working on a project that is assessing the process and outcomes of NCI’s Provocative Questions Initiative. I work for The Madrillon Group - a firm in the metropolitan Washington, DC region, which has been retained to assist CSSI with this assessment.

We greatly appreciate your willingness to help us with this project. We understand that your participation in this interview is voluntary, and we want to assure you that the information we gather from this and other interviews will only be used in aggregate. Responses from individuals will not be identified by name or shared outside the assessment team.

In order to capture your valuable input, I’d like to record this interview. The recordings will only be used internally and will be destroyed when the project is completed.

Do I have your permission to record this interview?

[] YES Thank you.

[] NO This interview will not be recorded. Rather, I will take notes on our conversation.

The interview will include open-ended questions on your views about two topics--the process of developing the Provocative Questions and the scientific outcomes as a result of the Provocative Question Initiative.

Do you have any questions before we begin?

1. WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT’S BACKGROUND

1. Do you currently have, or have you had in the past, any involvement with NCI in a leadership, advisory or other capacity such as the Board of Scientific Advisors, the Provocative Questions Executive Committee, or other NCI boards or committees?

2. PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS PROCESS

A. EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

2. How long have you been involved with the Provocative Questions Initiative? What is your involvement now? In your opinion, how has the Initiative evolved since its’ inception?

3. Was the workshop you attended thematic or regional?

   1. Do you remember how you were invited?

   2. How did you feel about being invited? Did you consider it an honor? A burden? Both?

   3. Thinking back, how were questions solicited before the workshop? During the workshop?

   4. Was there any kind of follow-up after the workshop?

4. At the time of the workshop, to what extent were you informed and did you understand that you were directing the development of questions to guide this initiative?

5. Thinking back to the workshop you attended; in your opinion did your participation have some impact on the Provocative Questions Initiative? Did you feel like a valued part of the process?

6. What is your impression of how the questions submitted through workshops are incorporated into the final set of Provocative Questions each round?

   1. Were you given information on which Provocative Questions were ultimately selected?

   2. What aspects of the Provocative Questions development and selection process do you think are working well?

   3. What aspects could be improved?

7. In your opinion, was convening workshops a useful way to identify perplexing scientific questions in cancer research? Why or why not? Understudied areas in cancer research? Why or why not?

8. What was the quality of the discourse at the workshop? Was it valuable to your scientific community?

9. What improvements would you suggest for future Provocative Questions workshops?

B. THE PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS LIFECYCLE

10. What is your impression of the number of Provocative Questions issued per year? Do you think there are too few, too many, or about the right number? Do you think they reflect the most perplexing and understudied questions in cancer research today?

3. PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS OUTCOMES

A. PUBLIC AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY ATTENTION TO THE PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS INITIATIVE

11. How familiar do you think the scientific community external to NIH is with the Provocative Questions Initiative?

1. How would you gauge the scientific community’s enthusiasm for the Provocative Questions Initiative as a new way to approach cancer research?

2. Do you have a sense of what features (e.g. less data required for application; high risk nature of the research) make the initiative attractive to researchers?

12. In your opinion, what are the successes and challenges of engaging the scientific community in the question development process through workshops?

    1. Do you think the workshops have enhanced public and scientific community interest in and attention to the Provocative Questions Initiative?

    2. NCI tried online submission of questions and that was not as successful as hoped. Are there other ways to involve the scientific community beyond a workshop?

4. INTERVIEW CONCLUSIONS

13. Do you think the Provocative Questions Initiative is a valuable program for NCI? Why or why not?

14. Is there anything else regarding the initiative that you think is important for us to know?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND PARTICIPATION IN THIS PROJECT!

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