Justification for nonsubstantive change-FFG-wave2--7-16-21

The Market Research emergency clearance package OMB approved in January 2021 covers a series of Foundational Focus Groups (FFGs) to examine the topics of preventative behaviors and vaccine knowledge, intent, attitudes, and barriers and motivators to vaccination. As noted within the original submission, the composition of audiences and content will change between iterations to accommodate the current state of COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination.

As such, the focus group discussion guide is revised to include questions about vaccine attitudes among parents of children aged 6–11 years old, as the authorization for this age group will be in the near future. We updated the discussion guide to discuss perceptions of vaccinations among young children, as well as explore trusted messengers and barriers that parents are facing. Additionally, we have added a section on communication approaches to understand what ideas resonate best with this audience in regard to persuading them to get their child vaccinated.

The number of focus groups and number of participants is unchanged—the study will conduct 18 focus groups comprised of 4-6 participants per group with a variety of audiences as summarized in the table below. As in our initial submission, we propose to conduct focus groups with general population adults, Black/African American adults and Hispanic/Latinx adults. However, we now propose to also conduct focus groups segmented by child vaccination likelihood (somewhat/very likely or unsure/somewhat likely), as well as parents who are classified as ‘rural’ (living in particular areas of the country with lower vaccination rates). Recruitment screeners are revised to reflect the updated target populations.

Approval of these changes allows the program to conduct a study consistent with the current environment in order to secure actionable insights to inform the ongoing HHS ASPA COVID-19 Public Education Campaign.

	Somewhat/Very Likely to get Child Vaccinated	Unsure/Somewhat Unlikely to get Child Vaccinated	Screening Notes
General Population	3	5	Mix of genders, race, and parent vaccination status
Unvaccinated Parent	2		Mix of gender and race
Hispanic/Latinx	2	2	One in Spanish
Black/African American	1	1
Rural	1	1	Participants from low vaccination areas such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Idaho, and Wyoming with skew towards Conservative ideology
TOTAL	9	9