HMTS Expedited Review Form

Health Message Testing System Expedited Review Form
1. Title of Study:
Office of the Associate Director for Communication (OADC) Message and Material
Feedback
2. Study Population:
On behalf of OADC, CommunicateHealth will conduct online surveys with 60
participants using Qualtrics, a secure survey platform1. IT security clearance for the use
of the Qualtrics online survey has been granted by the CDC NCEH Information System
Security Officer (ISSO). Our desired participants are a diverse mix of the general public
in education levels, races and ethnicities, and income levels.
Qualtrics will invite participants from their nation-wide participant panel to complete the
online surveys. The panel is a large, national database of diverse participants who have
volunteered to participate in their online surveys. Qualtrics’ volunteers are anonymous to
both CDC and CommunicateHealth.
Qualtrics will email potential participants a survey invitation (Attachment C). The
process for screening and completing the surveys will include the following steps:
 If the panel member volunteers to participate, they will click on a survey link in
the email invitation.
 The participant will answer a set of screener questions, which will ask about the
participant’s age, gender, race/ethnicity, education level, income, geographic
location, and health literacy level (estimated completion time is 3 minutes)
(Attachments D [text] and F [online]).
 To ensure a diverse mix of participants, the number of eligible participants will
be capped using quotas on each screener question (e.g., Quota on education level
will be 50% of participants with some college education completed or less).
 If the participant qualifies and consents (Attachments F [text] and G [online]),
they’ll complete survey questions about one material (estimated completion time
is 12 minutes) (Attachments H [text] and I [online]).
OADC and CommunicateHealth will not have access to any personally identifiable
information about participants. CommunicateHealth will access participant responses
through the Qualtrics reporting dashboard where participants are identified only by a
unique ID number.
The screener questions and response quotas will yield a sample with the following
characteristics:
 Age: Mixed, 18 and over
 Gender: Mixed
1

http://www.qualtrics.com/security-statement/

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Race/Ethnicity: Mixed
Education Level: Mixed, at least half of the participants cite some college
education completed or less
Income: Mixed, at least half of participants cite an income of $50,000 or less
Geography: Mixed
Health Literacy Level: Mixed

The screener questions will exclude from participation people who:
 Are under the age of 18
 Have participated in any research within the past 6 months
 Conduct market research or work in advertising or public relations
 Are unable to speak and read English well enough to complete the study
Respondent characteristics:
 Number of subjects: 60
 Number of males: Approximately 30
 Number of females: Approximately 30
 Age range: 18 and over
 Racial/ethnic composition: Mixed
 Special group status: None
 Geographic location/s: Mixed, drawn from nationwide sample
3. Incentives:
Qualtrics will offer participants reward points (small, non-monetary incentives) as a
token of appreciation for their participation. The email invitation includes the number of
reward points offered for the survey (Attachment C).
This small non-monetary incentive:
 Is consistent with industry standards for quantitative data collection efforts.
 Is given by Qualtrics (not CommunicateHealth or OADC) to panel members for
surveys they take through Qualtrics, in accordance with their panel membership.
 Will accumulate for panel participants as they take additional surveys (unrelated
to this study) through Qualtrics, eventually being redeemed for items such as gift
cards and subscriptions (e.g., magazines).
 Is required by Qualtrics in order to conduct recruitment from their diverse
national panel of participants.
 Is needed to receive a sufficient response rate, based on CommunicateHealth’s
and Qualtrics’ previous experiences to ensure recruitment and retention for this
hard-to-reach population (diverse, low income, and limited education) in similar
studies. For example, CommunicateHealth, on behalf of ATSDR, received OMB
clearance for a similar study involving the use of Qualtrics reward points under
NCEH/ATSDR Generic Clearance for Routine Customer Feedback (OMB# 09230047), approved October 2015.

Qualtrics will provide reward points to participants who qualify, consent, and complete
the survey. Qualtrics will not provide reward points to non-eligible participants.
4. Study method:
Central location intercept interview: _____
Telephone interview: _____ (CATI used: yes or no) _____
Individual in-depth interview (cognitive interview): _____
Focus group: _____
Online interview: _____
Other: (describe) ___Online survey_____
5. Purpose of the overall communication effort into which this health message/s will
fit:
OADC is collecting feedback on 4 sample health communication materials that are used
to communicate with the public about urgent and emerging public health issues (such as a
flu epidemic). The goal of the study is to learn how to create more effective messages and
materials to communicate to the public about urgent public health issues in the future.
Following the established protocol (Attachment A), a diverse mix of the general public
will answer the online survey questions to evaluate the following aspects of the health
messages and materials (Attachment B):
 Clarity of the material’s target audience, main message, and intended behavioral
recommendation
 Comprehensibility — how easy are messages in the material to understand
 Utility — how useful are messages in the material
 Design quality
Specifically, OADC wants to learn:
 How do participants rate the materials and messages in terms of being easy to
understand, useful, and well designed?
6. Category of time sensitivity: (Please check one below)
Health emergency: _____
Time-limited congressional/administrative mandate: _____
Press coverage correction: _____
Time-limited audience access: _____
Ineffective existing materials due to historical event/social trends: ___X__
Trend tracking: _____
7. Describe nature of time sensitivity: (Please provide 2-3 sentences below.)
Testing needs to be conducted quickly in order for there to be enough time within the
contract period of performance to evaluate survey findings and develop a set of final
recommendations.

Note: Previously, we submitted this project under two different OMB GenICs; however
neither clearance mechanism was available in the time needed for this request. These
delays cost the project 6 weeks in the project schedule.
8. Number of burden hours requested: 21
BURDEN HOURS
Category of Respondent

No. of
Respondents

Participation
Time
(minutes)

Burden
(hours)

Individuals (all potential participants
screened)

180

3/60

9

Individuals (focus group participants – atrisk adults)
Totals

60

12/60

12

240*

21

9. Are you using questions from the approved question bank? If yes, please list the
item number(s) for questions used from the question bank.
Yes: _____
No: __X___
The following HMTS question numbers were used: N/A

*** Items Below to be completed by Office of Associate Director for Communication
(OADC)***
1. Number of burden hours remaining in current year’s allocation: ___6996____
2. OADC confirmation of time-sensitivity:
Yes: _X_
No: _____
_
_Dawn B. Griffin__
Project Officer Signature

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