Request for Approval

Request for Approval under the “DOI Generic Clearance for the Collection of Qualitative Feedback on Agency Service Delivery”

(OMB Control Number: 1090-0011)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Assessment of Store Owners/Managers Interest and Awareness Regarding Aquatic Invasive Species in Alaska

PURPOSE: The purpose of the information collection is to inform future outreach efforts about the effectiveness of various communication strategies with owners and managers of outdoor recreation stores regarding the topic of prevention efforts against aquatic invasive species (AIS). These efforts will help, either directly or indirectly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) accomplish its conservation mission by improving the Service’s ability to tailor its message to various stakeholders. Participation in outreach and education efforts is ultimately a pathway for increasing the public's awareness and interest in aquatic resources in the US that the Service and others help manage and conserve. We are interested in finding out basic information regarding the level of interest from various stakeholders in promoting prevention efforts against AIS and what their basic understanding, if any, is of AIS.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS: Hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation store owners and managers, in the case of larger franchises, who sell or rent equipment for water-related recreational activities.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form Customer Satisfaction Survey

Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software) Small Discussion Group

Focus Group Other: ______________

CERTIFICATION: I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name: /s/ Deborah Kornblut, June 11, 2018

To assist review, please provide answers to the following questions:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? Yes No

2. If Yes, is the information that will be collected included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? Yes No

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? Yes No If “Yes”, please include the SORN title, number, and Federal Register citation for the publication:

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? Yes No

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Total Hour Burden
Private Sector (Commercial Vendors)	15	30 min (for both the pre- and post-surveys)	7.5

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $350 to collect and summarize the information. As a participant of the Directorate Resource Assistant Fellows Program (DFP), my position is equivalent to a GS 5/7 and I will be spending time with the participants whether or not the questions are asked. The questions will be part of a normal ice breaking conversation with participants.

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? Yes No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan). If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them.

As part of my DFP project, I am working on outreach for AIS this summer. In order to improve the effectiveness of the outreach material I will be working on, I want to understand what type of outreach material our target audience, shop vendors, would be interested in and what they know/don’t know about aquatic invasive species before and after the implementation of our outreach materials. Additionally, the data gathered will be beneficial for identifying how best to present future outreach efforts to these groups. I have created an Excel sheet listing stores, addresses, and phone numbers for their location through Google searches of local vendors. We will select a subset of priority vendors throughout Alaska by a Service Panel that I will coordinate. As a DFP, I am limited to 11 weeks of work this summer, which is why we narrowed the focus of our survey to a handful of respondents rather than every vendor on the list.

We selected respondents based on the presence of existing contacts at the location and on the popularity of the location. We selected our locations based on these criteria because we wanted to target locations we thought would be most responsive to our efforts and then who would also have a larger impact on dispersing the message to their local community. I plan to meet with points of contact in various commercial stores before and after the implementation/ creation of the outreach material. During these meetings, there will be time for casual conversation and opportunities to ask them questions about their prior exposure to aquatic invasive species. I will not collect PII. The questions asked will be to get a general sense of how connected and aware these stakeholders are to the issues at hand. I will not publish any specific statistics; however, there will likely be opportunity for internal presentation to Service staff and partners about the project generally.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

Web-based or other forms of Social Media

Telephone

In-person

Mail

Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? Yes No

Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the request.

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