Supporting Statement

OMB Control #0693-0033 OMB Expiration Date: 06/30/2019

Survey of the Thermal Analysis Community’s DSC-Related

Reference Material Needs

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

In an effort to evaluate and focus the division’s DSC-related reference material program efforts, the Applied Chemicals and Materials Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will survey the memberships of ASTM’s E37 Committee on Thermal Analysis and of the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS). These combined memberships allow NIST to reach a wide range of existing, as well as potential future national and international customers, from a variety of community segments, including academic researchers, commercial users, and instrument developers. By surveying this user community, the division will obtain feedback on how to best direct its ongoing reference development efforts to maximize its capital investments.

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

Survey questions were developed by the current Technical Contact for the division’s existing DSC-related reference materials, in conjunction with group leadership, based upon previous informal discussions with key members of the targeted community. The survey includes Yes/No questions and feedback questions. All feedback will be evaluated by the pertinent Group Leader, and Technical Contact and communicated to Division leadership. The survey also has a registration component for user contact information so that the survey manager can continue conversations as needed.

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 NIST Survey of the Thermal Analysis Community’s DSC-Related Reference Material Needs will be made available via email with the survey attached as a fillable form that can be completed and emailed back to the survey manager. The respondent will not incur any expense as a result of their participation. A request for participation will be broadcast to the entire memberships of both the ASTM E37 Committee on Thermal Analysis and the North American Thermal Analysis Society, which, combined, represent a broad swath of the thermal analysis user community and include both existing and potential new NIST SRM/RM customers. The total number of potential respondents is 466 and the estimated time to complete the survey is 5 minutes, for a burden total of 39 hours.

The survey uses Yes/No questions to direct respondents to skip irrelevant questions, thus reducing the number of questions and promoting an increase in the response rate. A response rate of at least 10% is anticipated. Having the survey delivered electronically encourages participation, including international participation, since postage is not required. The survey questions are extremely simple and easy to complete, further encouraging the customer participation.

The proposed survey form is provided. Although the survey includes a section requesting the respondent to provide their name (optional), the information is not stored in a Privacy Act System of Records in which information will be retrieved by a personal identifier. Therefore, SORN and Privacy Act Statement are not applicable.

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

The survey manager will collect, tabulate and analyze the received surveys. The analyzed results will then be communicated to the Group Leader and relevant Division leadership to aid in reference material development planning activities.