Survey Respondent Notification Letter

Dear Sir or Madam:

Thank you for your assistance in responding to the brief survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The data requested will be used to update the expenditure weights needed to compute the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI).

As outlined in the email request to your institution, the BRDPI is an index of prices paid for the labor, supplies, equipment, and other inputs required to perform the biomedical research that NIH supports in its intramural laboratories and through its awards to extramural organizations. The index is needed for planning future NIH programs, and for developing and justifying the annual NIH budget request to Congress. For example, annual changes in the BRDPI approximate how much the total NIH budget should be increased to compensate for price increases and to sustain the level of research effort supported during the previous year. (To see last year’s report on the index, please click on this link.)

The online form, which resides on a secure BEA website, represents efforts to limit the burden of the survey. It requests only information that is absolutely necessary to accomplish the goal of producing accurate and reliable estimates of the BRDPI. Once calculated, BRDPI and some of the supporting details and analyses will be published.

The collection and use of this information comply with all applicable information collection guidelines, i.e., those of the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Commerce, and the BEA.

The information provided by respondents will remain confidential and will be used exclusively for statistical purposes. This pledge of confidentiality is made under the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018 (CIPSEA) (44 U.S.C. § 3572), which provides that “data or information acquired by an agency under a pledge of confidentiality and for exclusively statistical purposes shall be used by officers, employees, or agents of the agency exclusively for statistical purposes and protected in accordance with such pledge. Data or information acquired by an agency under a pledge of confidentiality for exclusively statistical purposes shall not be disclosed by an agency in identifiable form, for any use other than an exclusively statistical purpose, except with the informed consent of the respondent.”

Responses will be kept confidential and will not be disclosed in identifiable form to anyone other than employees or agents of BEA or NIH without your consent. By law, each employee as well as each agent is subject to a jail term of up to 5 years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both if he or she makes public ANY identifiable information that you report about your business or institution.

Please provide the information requested on expenditures made by your institution and reimbursed by NIH during your 2019 fiscal year. (See the survey glossary on the website.)

Please submit your responses to the survey provided below by October 23, 2020. If you have questions about this survey, please contact Evan Wang at 301-278-9674 or by email at brdpi@bea.gov.

Your participation is very important for maintaining the accuracy and credibility of the BRDPI, and your assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Michael S. Lauer, M.D.
NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research
Office of the Director, Office of Extramural Research