Supporting Statement – Boren Scholarship and Fellowship Survey
A. JUSTIFICATION
1. Need for the Information Collection
The Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness administers Boren Scholarships and Fellowships for students planning to study abroad to improve their cultural and language skills in areas critical to national security. In exchange for financial assistance, students are required to work for the federal government for one year after completing the program. This is called their service requirement. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Boren program by identifying where alumni currently work and how their careers have developed since completing their service requirement.
To gather input from Boren Scholars and Fellows, CNA will develop and field a survey to Boren Fellows and Scholars who have completed their service requirement and analyze the data collected. The survey is retrospective and will collect information on the Boren Scholars and Fellows at one point in time. We do not have a comparison group and therefore will not be making any causal inference from our results.
2. Use of the Information
The CNA study team will analyze the Boren survey results and incorporate their findings into their draft and final report to DLNSEO. As noted above, the purpose of this research is to examine the Boren Scholarship and Fellowship program and identify where alumni currently work as well as how their careers have developed since completing their service requirement.
Our research design is simple; we will collect survey data from Boren scholars and recipients who have completed their service requirement at one point in time. Our survey is retrospective and captures information on the scholars and fellows educational experiences and career paths since completing the program. Our primary objective is to obtain feedback from Boren Scholars and Fellows regarding their motivation for applying for a Boren Award, their education and career since completing the program, and how they feel the skills acquired during the program have influenced their career paths. This information will be used to assess if the program is achieving its goal of providing government agencies with a talented cadre of employees with the needed international skills. As noted above, we do not have a comparison group and therefore will not be making any causal inference from our results.
3. Use of Information Technology
We are fielding the survey electronically using a secure HTTP internet site. The survey consists primarily of closed-ended questions. Survey respondents will read the questions and click on their responses which will be stored in an electronic file automatically generated by the survey software. We also will include an open-ended question at the end of the survey to allow respondents to provide any additional feedback and comments about the Boren program.
4. Non-duplication
There are no current or recent historical surveys asking Boren Scholars and Fellows about their educational experiences and career path after completing the Boren program.
6. Less Frequent Collection
We will be fielding the Boren Scholarship and Fellowship survey one-time.
7. Paperwork Reduction Act Guidelines
8. Consultation and Public Comments
Proposed Collection; Comment Request: Boren Scholarship and Fellowship Survey; OMB Control Number 0704-TBD, was filed for public inspection on Monday, May 6, and published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, May 7.
Federal Register/ Vol. 78, No. 88 / Tuesday, May 7, 2013 / Notices 26621
Comments: No comments received
Subjects will incur no costs to participate in the study and they will receive no compensation for their participation.
10. Confidentiality
Respondents will be instructed that their participation in the survey is voluntary. CNA will retain these data until completion of the study and publication of final results. This data will be stored on CNA’s secure server and will not be available to CNA personnel who are not on the study team.
No personal identifiers other than the respondent’s email address will be involved. Each completed survey will have the Boren scholar or fellow’s email address associated with it. We will use the email address to determine our survey response rate. Once we close out the survey and determine our response rate, we will remove the email addresses from the survey response data.
CNA follows the data rules of the Bureau of the Census in reporting summary statistics on small populations, including the rule that no summary statistics will be reported for groups of fewer than five individuals. Risk of identification is minimal. CNA requires that all project deliverables, reports, briefings, etc., be reviewed internally before release to the sponsor. That review includes a search for occasions of inadvertent release of information that could lead to subject identification. The individual selected to review reports will not be part of the same team as the principal investigator or the project research staff. CNA will store the data on its secure server upon the conclusion of the study.
We are not collecting personal identifiers and we will not be retrieving responses and analyzing them by an identifier.
Only members of the CNA study team, the CNA SCO administrators, and DLNSEO will have access to the electronic database. The CNA study team members are: Ms. Jessica Wolfanger, Mr. Zachary Miller, and Ms. Lauri Wells. The CNA SCO administrators are Ms. Anne Brambora and Mr. Martin Tamm.
There will be no hard copies of completed surveys. Respondents may only answer the survey via the secure HTTP survey web-site.
SORN: Not applicable
Privacy Impact Assessment: Not applicable
11. Sensitive Questions
We do not include any questions of a sensitive nature. To my knowledge, no question violates the Privacy Act as implemented by DoD 5400.11-R.
12. Respondent Burden, and its Labor Costs
a. Estimation of Respondent Burden
We have pre-tested the survey with former Boren Scholarship and Fellowship recipients (fewer than 9) who have completed their service requirement by having them take the survey online and provide feedback. We estimate that the average response time will be approximately 15 minutes. If the approximately 1,800 respondents all replied to this one-time survey, using this average response time, the burden would be 450 hours. The response rate, however, will likely be much lower and therefore this estimate is an upper-bound.
b. Labor Cost of Respondent Burden
As noted above, we are surveying approximately 1,800 people and estimate the survey will take about 15 minutes to complete. If all 1,800 people respond, the total respondent burden will be 450 total hours.
The average annual base salary (adjusted to include locality pay) for full time, permanent federal employees, per the U.S. Office of Personnel and Management’s (OPM) Central Personnel Data File, is estimated to be $78,601 (as of September 30, 2012).1 Per OPM, the 2,087-hour divisor must be used for almost all civilian federal employees in an executive agency, including employees under the General Schedule, and most other employees, unless excluded by law.2
To calculate the labor cost of respondent burden, we are assuming that all survey respondents are federal employees, working 2,087 hours annually, earning an average annual base salary of $78,601, or $37.40, per hour. Thus, the burden rate is calculated to be:
450 hours * $37.40 = $16,830.00
13. Respondent Costs Other Than Burden Hour Costs
a. There will be no capital or start-up costs to respondents.
b. There will be no operation and maintenance costs to respondents.
14. Cost to the Federal Government
The costs incurred by the Federal Government in collecting and processing the information collected are estimated to be as follows:
Contractor Costs: $500,000 for the development of a survey to capture findings, data, and observations from Boren Scholarship and Fellowship alumni, as well as production of a report detailing findings, data, and observations from the Boren Scholarship and Fellowships alumni survey.
Government Oversight Costs: $25,000 for three government officials to oversee all aspects of survey development and distribution, as well as report writing, editing, and publication.
The Cost Accounting and Program Evaluation reference number associated with this report is A-2C4269D.
15. Reasons for Change in Burden
16. Publication of Results
We will collect survey data from Boren Scholars and Fellows about the program at one point in time. We are surveying the entire population of recipients who have completed their service requirement which involves approximately 1,800 scholarship and fellowship recipients who we have contact information for. Once the data is collected, we will analyze data based on the time period the award was given, and the length of the study abroad period funded. We expect responses to vary within these categories.
We are particularly interested in the time period of the award for a variety of reasons. First, the Boren program has evolved over the years including an increase in the level of support that NSEP/DLNSEO has offered to students in terms of mentorship and assistance finding jobs to fulfill the service requirement. The alumni organization known as the Boren Forum which hosts career fairs and provides other networking opportunities also didn’t exist in the earlier years of the program. These differences could contribute to different perspectives that may be reflected in respondents’ opinions regarding the program and the impact it has had on their careers.
CNA began working on this project in May 2012. The scheduled end date is Aug 2014. We outline the project tasks and timeline in the Table 1.
Table 1. Outline of project tasks and timeline
Project task |
Task completion date |
Identify SMEs and stakeholders and conduct interviews |
April 2013 |
Develop survey instrument |
May 2013 |
Field survey |
Jan 2013 |
Analyze survey data |
March/April 2014 |
Document results, incorporate comments, and disseminate |
Aug 14 |
17. Non-Display of OMB Expiration Date
18. Exceptions to "Certification for Paperwork Reduction Submissions"
1 http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/reports-publications/profile-of-federal-civilian-non-postal-employees/
2 http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/computing-hourly-rates-of-pay-using-the-2087-hour-divisor/
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Patricia Toppings |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-28 |