Non Sub Request Memo re. Screener Revisions

THE UNIVERSITY OF

CHICAGO

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE
Section of General Internal Medicine
5841 South Maryland Avenue, MC 2007, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Phone 773-702-8157 • Fax 773-834-2238
varora@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
Vineet Arora, MD, MA
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine
Assistant Dean, Scholarship & Discovery
Director of GME Clinical Learning Environment Innovation

MEMORANDUM

TO:

OMB

FROM:

VINEET ARORA, MD MA

SUBJECT: AMENDMENT FOR IMPROVE STUDY (1U01FD005485) SURVEY SCREENER
DATE:

12/20/2016

Study materials for the above-referenced study have been amended to incorporate minor changes.
Specifically, the changes are as follows:
1. Eligibility Criteria: Our previous plan was to screen participants based on seven criteria based on
preexisting ACP and AANP database information. We have eliminated several screening questions for greater
diversity of responses and chose to only screen respondents using two questions to ensure they have adequate
patient care experience to answer survey questions.
2. Demographic Intake Questions: Recently, we amended our screening process to include demographic
intake questions. These questions were modeled after questions administered by ACP and AANP and aimed
to ensure equipoise between ACP and AANP’s collected demographic data and allow for stronger data
analysis. Based on input from our stakeholders and experts, we have made changes to the response options to
better reflect the range of possible answers and improve our data analysis capabilities. Additionally, we have
opted to move these optional questions to the end of the survey rather than the beginning of the survey, as we
had proposed before. By doing this, we hope to decrease the burden on participants and avoid drop out or
survey fatigue before respondents answer more pertinent survey questions.
3. ACP & AANP Distinction: At the request of our ACP and AANP stakeholders, we have edited the
screener questions to better reflect language and terminology native to each organization. We have highlighted
these variations in the amended screener, where the green highlight represents ACP language and the yellow
highlight represents AANP language.
We do not anticipate a significant increase in burden or risk for participants as a result of these changes; it is
unlikely that these changes would impact the initial burden computation. If anything, these changes would
alleviate some of the burden placed on participants and improve our screening process.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,

Vineet Arora, MD, MA
Principal Investigator, IMPROVE