Submission for OMB review; comment request; NCCAM Office of Communications and Public Liaison Communications Program Planning and Evaluation Research

Under the provisions of Section 3507(a)(1)(D) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a request to review and approve the information collection listed below. This proposed information collection was previously published in the Federal Register on August 25, 2010 (Vol. 75, No. 164, p. 52349) and allowed 60-days for public comment. There was one public comments received during this time. The purpose of this notice is to allow an additional 30 days for public comment. The National Institutes of Health may not conduct or sponsor, and the respondent is not required to respond to, an information collection that has been extended, revised, or implemented on or after October 1, 1995, unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Proposed Collection: Title: NCCAM Office of Communications and Public Liaison Communications Program Planning and Evaluation Research. Type of Information Collection Request: Extension. Need and Use of Information Collection: To carry out NCCAM's legislative mandate to educate and disseminate information about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to a wide variety of audiences and organizations, the NCCAM Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL) requests clearance to carry out (1) formative and (2) evaluative research of a variety of print and online materials, outreach activities, and messages to maximize their impact and usefulness. OCPL wishes to continue to carry out formative research to further understand the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of its core constituent groups: members of the general public, researchers, and providers of both conventional and CAM health care. In addition, it seeks to test newly formulated messages and identify barriers and impediments to the effective communication of those messages. With this formative audience research, OCPL test audience responses to NCCAM's fact sheets, Web content, and other materials and messages. Clearance is also requested to continue evaluative research on existing materials and messages, as part of OCPL's ongoing effort to develop a comprehensive program of testing and evaluation of all of its communications strategies. This evaluative research will include pilot testing of recently developed messages and information products such as consumer fact sheets and brochures. It will address the need to evaluate the processes by which new materials and messages were developed, the effectiveness of an outreach activity or the extent to which behaviors were changed by the message, and the impact of a message on health knowledge and behaviors. The tools to collect this information have been selected to minimize burden on NCCAM's audiences, produce or refine messages that have the greatest potential to influence target audience attitudes and behavior in a positive manner, and to use Government resources efficiently. They may include individual in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, intercept interviews, self-administered questionnaires, gatekeeper reviews, and omnibus surveys. The data will enhance OCPL's understanding of the unique information needs and distinct health-information-seeking behaviors of its core constituencies, and the segments within these constituencies with special information needs (for example, among the general public these segments include cancer patients, the chronically ill, minority and ethnic populations, the elderly, users of dietary supplements, and patients integrating complementary therapies with conventional medical treatments). Frequency of Response: On occasion. Affected Public: Individuals and households; non-profit institutions; Federal Government; State, Local, or Tribal Government. Type of Respondents: Adult patients; members of the public; health care professionals; organizational representatives. The annual reporting burden is as follows: Estimated Number of Respondents: 2,500; Estimated Number of Responses per Respondent: 1; Average Burden Hours per Response: 0.58; and Estimated Total Burden Hours Requested: 2,109 for the 3-year clearance period (approximately 703 hours annually). The annualized cost to respondents is estimated at $18,123. There are no Capital Costs, Operating Costs, or Maintenance Costs to report.