Supporting Statement

OMB Control No. 0693-0033 – NIST Generic Clearance for Program Evaluation Data Collections

NIST Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Commercialization Survey

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

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

Small businesses that have completed Phase 1 and/or Phase 2 SBIR projects will be surveyed (survey/script in ROCIS). Only these small businesses can provide insight into how the SBIR Program was beneficial in the product commercialization process. The purpose of the survey is to evaluate the usefulness of the SBIR program in assisting small businesses to commercialize a product and to identify ways that the program can provide additional assistance.

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

The survey instrument was developed by the NIST SBIR Program management after reviewing similar instruments used by other SBIR agency programs. A small group of small businesses were surveyed to test the instrument and no suggestions for improvement were received.

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.

All NIST SBIR awardees will be surveyed via the telephone. A high (greater than 85%) response rate is expected. Follow-up phone calls will be made to those customers that were not contacted via the first attempt. Attempts to find other contacts within the company will be made if the primary contact is no longer with the company. Since the survey will not be administered until one year after project completion, some customers may be difficult to contact.

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

Results will be used to identify ways NIST can assist individual small businesses. Generalized results will reveal trends that can help guide SBIR Program improvements.