MEMORANDUM
Date: April 14, 2016
To: Shelly Wilkie Martinez, Desk Officer
Office of Management and Budget
From: John Gawalt, Director
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
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 interviews under the generic clearance for survey improvement projects (OMB #3145-0174). This activity is associated with the NSF State Government Research and Development (SGRD) Survey.
The State Government Research and Development Survey has been conducted every one to two years since 2006. The survey collects information on the sources and recipients of funds for R&D expenditures from state-level agencies; approximately 500 state-level agencies are in the survey universe. Though the Census Bureau holds the clearance for the survey (0607-0933), NSF is the survey sponsor.
The 2014-15 data collection cycle’s online instrument was moved from one system (Harvester) to the Census Bureau’s enterprise online system, Centurion. Prior to that transition, the Census Bureau conducted two rounds of cognitive interviews and one round of usability tests with respondents. As data are received on the current cycle, NSF plans to conduct respondent debriefings regarding the Centurion system and instrument, in order to gain feedback with an eye toward possible future changes to the instrument.
Screenshots of the Centurion instrument are provided in Attachment A. The e-mails used to recruit participants for this study are provided in Attachment B, and the interview protocol can be found in Attachment C.
All respondents to the SGRD Survey will be eligible to participate in the respondent debriefings. However, NSF will select a mix of large, medium, and small agencies, without regard to geography, to ensure representation from a variety of agency types and states. Agencies will be selected on a rolling basis, as survey data comes in during the cycle. NSF will coordinate with the Census Bureau to ensure that respondents are not overly burdened with these respondent debriefings and data collection follow-ups.
We will schedule interviews with each respondent selected; interviews will take place on the phone or via an online meeting (e.g., WebEx).
Interviews: We expect to conduct 30 interviews of 20 minutes each with survey respondents to get their feedback on using the Centurion instrument to complete the SGRD. Therefore, we estimate a total of 10 hours of respondent burden.
There are no incentive payments.
The contact person for questions regarding this data collection is:
Christopher Pece
Project Manager
State Government Research and Development Survey
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
National Science Foundation
703-292-7788
Attachments
cc: Rebecca Morrison
Joydip Kundu
John Jankowski
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| File Title | MEMORANDUM |
| Author | LCHRISTO |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-29 |