ECRMemo

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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institutes of Health

Center for Scientific Review

Office of the Director

6701 Rockledge Dr., Rm. 3016

Bethesda, Maryland 20892-7776

Apr 19, 2012

To: Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Through: Reports Clearance Officer, DHHS

Project Clearance Chief, NIH

From: Dr. George Chacko, Director,

Office of Planning, Analysis and Evaluation

Center for Scientific Review (CSR)

Subject: Center for Scientific Review (CSR),

Study Section Chair Training Evaluation (OMB Control Number: 0925-0474)

Circumstances Requiring the Survey: The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) is the portal of the NIH peer-review system. Its mission is to ensure NIH grant applications receive fair, independent, expert and timely scientific review. CSR and NIH are committed to diversity in the scientific work force. To promote this aim, the Early Career Reviewer program was created as a way to enable talented junior scientists from a variety of institutions to participate in the peer review process and gain experience while contributing to a critical partnership between the federal government and the scientific community. To better understand the effectiveness and quality of the ECR program, CSR proposes to conduct an evaluation under the OMB control number 0925-0474, with expiration date 10/31/2014.

Purposes and Uses of the Data Collection: The survey will assess satisfaction of the scientists who participated in the Early Career Reviewer program with the training they received and their experience. It will allow CSR to refine the program to maximize its utility.

Automated information technology will be used to collect and process data for this survey. The data will be secure to the extent permitted by law. Participants will be provided a unique code and password to access and conduct a secure online survey on the training session they attended. Participation in the survey will be strictly voluntary and individual respondents will not be identified. CSR will not provide payment or other forms of remuneration to respondents in collecting feedback. Respondents will be assured that neither their participation/non-participation nor any responses in the survey will be linked to their identity and will have any effect on their services at CSR.

Estimates of Burden Hours and Costs

Types of Respondents	Number of Respondents	Frequency of Responses per Respondent	Average Response Time	Response Hour Burden
Early Career Reviewers	140	1	10 min	23 hours (1400 min) / $0 cost