NIST Feedback Survey for RGTM 10169 - Supporting Statement

OMB Control #0693-0043

Expiration Date: 03/31/2022

NIST Generic Clearance for Usability Data Collections

NIST Feedback Survey for RGTM 10169 (SARS-CoV-2 Synthetic RNA Fragments)

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

The Material Measurement Laboratory (MML) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will survey the community of developers, manufacturers, and users of diagnostic tests for COVID-19.

NIST has rapidly produced a much-needed material that developers, manufacturers, and users of diagnostic tests for COVID-19 can employ to calibrate lab equipment and check the quality of new tests. To very quickly get this critical material to the community, NIST has forgone many months of its usual deep measurement science in order to make the material available (free of charge) as soon as possible, but NIST needs feedback from users in order to continue to improve it.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

The survey was developed by NIST scientists who are in frequent dialog with the COVID-19 testing community in consultation with NIST communications experts. The questions address characteristics of the product and the means used to analyze it that NIST knows to be relevant to the user community. The survey has been pre-tested among NIST scientists.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

The survey will be conducted as a Google Form that each recipient of the product will be asked to fill out. The known community of test labs and test developers will be informed of the request for participation via email. A sample of the email has been provided as a supplemental document in ROCIS. We expect that the community will be eager to improve this much-needed product and so initial response rate is estimated at 15%. We have contact information for every requester of this product, and can contact non-responders to request their participation improving the response rate to closer to 50%.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

The survey results will be parsed for qualitative and quantitative information. The general yes/no questions will be summarized in a pie chart for illustrations. The quantitative values of concentration (if provided) will be examined and plotted in a X-Y scatter plot to understand the degree of variation from our initial estimated values. Feedback and comments will be reviewed by members of the NIST Applied Genetics Group who created the material. General trends and points will used to make internal decisions and/or improvements to the material. Trends may be shared though the project webpage (see draft attached to sample email provided as a Supplemental Document in ROCIS)and in scientific meetings.