SUPPORTING STATEMENT - PART A
DoD-wide Data Collection and Analysis for Department of Defense Qualitative Data Collection in Support of the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault Recommendations (OMB Control Number 0704-0644)
Title of Collection: Prevention Workforce Evaluation
Expected Fielding Date: 1 September 2023 – 1 September 2029
1. Need for the Information Collection
Harmful behaviors (suicide, domestic violence, harassment, sexual assault, child abuse) can have detrimental and long-lasting impacts on U.S. service members’ physical and mental health, affecting their quality of life and their military careers. Moreover, reducing rates of these harmful behaviors can improve force readiness.
To augment efforts focused on integrated primary prevention (IPP, addressing two or more of these harmful behaviors through primary prevention) DoD is hiring about 2,500 Integrated Primary Prevention personnel, comprised of full-time personnel (herein called the Integrated Primary Prevention Workforce or IPPW) and part-time or support personnel. As this significant investment in prevention unfolds, a DoD- sponsored evaluation will be necessary to track the progress and impact of these new personnel, as well as identify any mid-course corrections that should be made to the hiring, orientation, or integration process to maximize the impacts of this investment. Hiring these new personnel was recommended by the Independent Review Committee (IRC) on Sexual Assault in the Military and endorsed by Secretary of Defense as a priority for DoD (Recommendation 2.2: Establish a dedicated primary prevention workforce). Thus, this project will provide support to decision makers and leaders within the DoD and external to DoD (e.g., IRC members) as well as the service branches and installations that hire and integrate the new personnel.
This evaluation will be six years and is sponsored by the Office of Force Resiliency, Violence Prevention Cell (VPC) and conducted within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD), which operates the National Defense Research Institute (NDRI), a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense intelligence enterprise.
2. Use of the Information
This evaluation will answer the following six questions:
1. Are the DoD components (i.e., Military Departments, Services, and the National Guard Bureau) hiring the right people across strategic, operational, and tactical levels and putting supports in place to ensure their success?
2. Are the IPP personnel improving their prevention infrastructure and implementing data-informed prevention processes across the strategic, operational and tactical levels?
3. Does the hiring of IPP personnel reduce the prevalence of Service members harming themselves and others and their contributing factors?
4. What is the return on investment? How might that change as IPP staffing levels change?
5. Are the DoD components' approaches to IPP meeting the requirements set forth by DoD?
6. Are IPP personnel’s reports of their competencies, prevention activities and perceptions of installation climate consistent across multiple evaluation data sources?
To answer these questions, this evaluation will employ multiple methods, which we describe below in turn.
LEADER AND SUPERVISOR INTERVIEWS. Qualitative interviews to assess strategic and operational IPP personnel and DoD component leaders’ perceptions of progress hiring and integrating tactical-level IPP personnel.
To identify who we will interview, we will start with IPP personnel at the strategic- and operational-levels to ask who their direct supervisors are until we get to a non-IPP personnel and interview that person. Our sponsor will be creating a list of all IPP personnel and their email addresses. We will obtain that list from VPC and use it to determine who to target for interviews. To create the sample, we will look for representation across all services and different IPP types. We will refer to this non-IPP personnel as a DoD component leader. We will also interview members of the Prevention Collaboration Forum, a governance body to oversee the implementation of the integrated prevention policy (DODI 6400.09).
We will conduct semi-structured interviews with these DoD component leaders and strategic- and operational-level IPP personnel to capture progress and barriers both early in the initiative (Year 2) as well as after the initiative has matured (Years 4 and 6). In Year 2, we will sample through ‘snowball’ referrals—i.e., using DoD stakeholders to guide us to the most appropriate individuals with whom to interview. We will ask the sponsor for points of contact in Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the DoD components, and potentially the Joint Staff. Once identified, we will ask the following as part of the snowball sampling:
• Who in your organization will have responsibility for the hiring, supervision, and management of these new IPP personnel? Who will the new IPP personnel report to?
• Who in your organization will have oversight for policy and resource allocation decision-making for the IPP personnel?
We will interview personnel across the DoD components. We anticipate interviewing about 20 personnel (to include both uniformed and civilian, as relevant) in each DoD component (Table 1), depending on the snowball sampling.
Table 1. Proposed DoD Components
Proposed Organizations for DoD Component Leaders |
U.S. Air Force: Active HQ; Reserve HQ; National Guard HQ |
U.S. Space Force: Active HQ |
U.S. Army: Active HQ; Reserve HQ; National Guard HQ |
U.S. Navy: Active HQ; Reserve HQ |
U.S. Marine Corps: Active HQ; Reserve HQ |
U.S. National Guard Bureau |
*Contingent upon where the IPPW are placed (e.g., whether any are assigned to reserve installations)
It is also anticipated that we will interview leaders at OSD Personnel and Readiness organizations with a role in recruiting or coordinating with the IPP personnel and monitoring outcomes of prevention activities, as well as members of the Prevention Collaboration Forum. In Years 4 and 6 we will follow up with the same personnel from Year 2, or different ones if the personnel have changed positions or position responsibilities have changed.
All interviews will be conducted by Zoom.gov video calls. RAND will take detailed notes. After each interview, the resulting notes will be de-identified via a link file and thus will not contain service member names or respondent names and contact information but will contain some demographic information that might support identification by inference for individuals in certain demographic subgroups (e.g., location, pay grade, gender, installation group combinations). These data will be stored on secure RAND servers for analysis. The link file will be encrypted and stored in one of RAND’s “cold rooms” (Cold Rooms house computers in an air-gapped environment, preventing unauthorized access to personally identifiable information data. Entry to Cold Rooms is limited and tracked to provide physical protection, and the data are password-protected with file and directory permissions. All Cold Room computers provide encryption software to further protect data from unauthorized access).
The end result of the Leader and Supervisor Interviews is that RAND will have an understanding of the barriers and facilitator that exist at each level of the hiring and deployment of IPP personnel. If IPP personnel face a great deal of barriers, that could help to explain the outcomes achieved by the entire initiative.
IPP PERSONNEL SURVEY: Online survey to assess competencies of all IPP personnel (~n=2500) across strategic, operational, and tactical levels and perceptions of whether a supportive climate for prevention exists. The IPP personnel will be hired over the course of five years, according to the schedule in Table 1.
Table 1. Estimated unique number of new IPP personnel hires by FY
|
FY 22-23 |
FY24 |
FY25 |
FY26 |
FY27 |
FY 28 |
DoD component |
Study Y1 |
Study Y2 |
Study Y3 |
Study Y4 |
Study Y5 |
Study Y6 |
Army |
338 |
120 |
214 |
214 |
94 |
-- |
Navy |
88 |
11 |
29 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
Marine Corps |
31 |
12 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
Air/Space Force |
227 |
91 |
88 |
11 |
-- |
-- |
ARNG |
170 |
155 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
ANG |
71 |
65 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
Totals |
925 |
454 |
331 |
225 |
94 |
-- |
We are asking IPP personnel competency and climate questions because in order for this initiative to succeed, these personnel must have the knowledge and skills (i.e., the competencies) to perform their job. Further, the climate with which they operate must be receptive and supportive to prevention work.
RAND will administer the survey annually for each year of the evaluation period. Given that hiring will be rolling across the evaluation period, IPP personnel will take the survey a different number of times depending on when they are hired.
RAND will obtain email addresses of the IPP personnel from our sponsor, VPC, and send them an email containing a link to an online survey. The survey will be conducted via secure online survey platform (e.g., Qualtrics). Data will be downloaded from the survey’s secure platform and designated RAND team member(s) will download the data onto an encrypted USB thumb drive. Within one working day, all transmitted data files will be checked for the presence of unwanted identifying information. This check will be carried out in one of RAND’s cold rooms so that any unwanted identifying information can be removed prior to placing the data on a secure RAND server. Once the source file is checked for unwanted identifying information and uploaded onto a secure RAND server, the file will be deleted from the encrypted thumb drive. A link file will be created (e.g., linking the data to individual installations). The link file will be encrypted and stored in a RAND cold room. The IPP Personnel Survey and email invitation are attached.
The end result of the IPP Personnel Survey is that RAND will have an understanding of the level of competency of the new IPP personnel and the degree of the support they received. This data will be used to contextualize the ultimate outcomes of the evaluation—namely the level of competency of the IPP personnel could help explain why or why not DoD was able to reduce harmful behaviors.
The below data collection activities are summarized here. Full details can be found in Supporting Statement Part B for this OMB submission:
TRACKING PREVENTION BILLETS, TRAININGS, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES: Tracking the progress of filling IPP personnel billets, retaining IPP personnel, and providing sufficient coverage across DoD and the completion of required prevention training, credentialing and for full-time IPPW annual professional development requirements. This method will assess how well DoD has filled the IPP personnel billets in a timely manner, hired and retained a sufficient number of IPP personnel, and adequately trained IPP personnel for their roles and to retain their professional credentials. The research question addresses the logic model component of whether there is a fully implemented workforce.
INTEGRATED PRIMARY PREVENTION ACTIVITY TRACKER (I-PACT): Documentation of the type and scope of prevention activities implemented by all IPP personnel. The Integrated Primary Prevention Activity Tracker (I-PACT) will assess IPP activities implemented in all installations that have hired IPP Personnel and addresses the degree to which there Fully Implemented Process component in the logic model.
COHORT STUDY: Conducting a quasi-experimental study across DoD components to compare a sub-group of installations that have and have not hired IPP personnel on barriers to hiring, prevention activities, and support for IPP, at local organizational and DoD component levels, and provide context to the findings from the other methods. This method will provide a bottom-up perspective on the hiring, integration, and effectiveness of the IPP personnel, as well as critical context to the overall evaluation findings, including a clearer understanding of barriers and facilitators that IPP personnel face. This method will be a two-phase cohort study, recruiting a sample of installations that have hired IPP personnel and a sample that have not. These installations will be recruited in two cohorts. Cohort A will comprise 16 installations (8 with their full complement of IPP Personnel and 8 without); Cohort B will comprise 10 installations, all with their full complement of IPP personnel. The primary data collection method will be interviews. These interviews will follow closely the protocol for the Leader/Supervisor Interviews described above, adapted for the tactical/installation instead of the strategic or operational levels.
IPPW RESUME REVIEW: Using the required IPPW skills and competencies from DoD components’ PDs and the DoD’s Prevention Workforce Model, RAND will rate the alignment of a sub-set (10%) of full-time IPPW resumes with these requirements. We will purposefully select IPPW across DoD components, with estimated numbers and types based off the DoD component’s final hiring plans.
IPP PLAN REVIEW: Using the Plan Quality Index to rate the quality and comprehensiveness of a sub-set of installations’ IPP plans, this method will provide an in-depth review of IPP teams, including their implementation and evaluation of IPP processes, and will provide context to findings from the analysis of I-PACT data.
DOD SECONDARY DATA: Data that DoD already collects from service members such as the Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Service members, the Defense Organizational Climate Survey, incidents of sexual assault, etc. will be gathered by RAND, each year of the evaluation period, to conduct three types of analyses: 1) statistical modeling to determine the ultimate impact of the IPP personnel on harmful behaviors and their risk factors; 2) determine the degree to which the IPP personnel work is cost-effective (i.e., do the cost savings that accrue from harmful behaviors avoided outweigh the cost of the new IPP personnel); and 3) conduct simulation modeling that is able to make predictions about future outcomes based on the current relationship between the IPP personnel work and impacts on harmful behaviors.
3. Use of Information Technology
About 90% of the of responses in this project will be collected electronically. The only responses not collected electronically will be interview data collected from senior leaders and IPP personnel supervisors and from IPP personnel during site visits.
4. Non-duplication
As detailed above, this project makes use of several existing data sources, including hiring data of the IPP personnel billets, IPPW resumes, DoD-required installation IPP plans, and several secondary data collections that DoD already conducts (i.e., sources listed in Table 2). Although the evaluation will use existing data and documents, doing so will not add burden to respondents. The evaluation will be analyzing these sources in different ways. Other data from the evaluation will be unique, including the IPP Personnel Survey, the site visits from the Cohort Study, the Integrated Primary Prevention Activity Tracker, and the interviews conducted with senior leaders. These data are not available anywhere else and are required to assess the progress of the new IPP personnel hiring, activities, and impact.
5. Burden on Small Businesses
This information collection does not impose a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small businesses or entities.
6. Less Frequent Collection
The timeframes for data collection are the most infrequent as possible to minimize burden, while still yielding information needed for the evaluation. Some data collection will follow the schedule of the IPP personnel hiring (i.e., tracking of the billets, resume review of IPP personnel). Other data collection follows the schedule of work performed by the IPP personnel (Plan Quality Review, Prevention Activity Tracker). Other data collection—The IPP Personnel Survey (annually), the Cohort Study (site visits in Years 2-5), and the Supervisor/Leader Interviews (Years 2, 4, 6)—have time frames that allow for repeated measurement, which will be critical to tracking the progress of the IPP personnel. For example, the IPP Personnel Survey will be administered annually which will be important to track the newly hired IPP personnel across the evaluation period and assess how the support and IPP competencies change over time. The Supervisor/Leader Interviews and Cohort Study also allow for repeated measurement.
7. Paperwork Reduction Act Guidelines
This collection of information does not require collection to be conducted in a manner inconsistent with the guidelines delineated in 5 CFR 1320.5(d)(2).
8. Consultation and Public Comments
Part A: PUBLIC NOTICE
A 30-Day Federal Register Notice for the collection published on Wednesday, June 22, 2023. The 30-Day FRN citation is 88 FR 40791.
Part B: CONSULTATION
We have consulted with representatives from each DoD component (Army, Navy, etc) and with the offices responsible for managing the secondary data on harmful behaviors listed in Table 2.
9. Gifts or Payment
We will offer $40 Amazon Gift Cards to each IPP personnel who completes a IPP Personnel Survey each year. These individuals will receive an email with a link to their Gift Card. There will be no requirements about the level of completion for each data collection. Once the survey is submitted online, the individual will be eligible for the Gift Card. These payments are being offered to compensate the participating individuals for their time and can be used by respondents to purchase necessary products to improve quality of life.
10. Confidentiality
A Privacy Act Statement has been provided with this package for OMB’s review.
A System of Record Notice (SORN) is not required for this collection because records are not retrievable by PII.
A draft copy of the PIA has been provided with this package for OMB’s review.
Records Retention and Disposition Schedule. RAND will either maintain records on behalf of the Government in accordance with appropriate retentions schedule (maintain for 5 years in accordance with OSD 1807-02) or transfer all records to the Government upon termination of contract.
11. Sensitive Questions
The only sensitive questions that will be asked will be about Race/Ethnicity of the IPP personnel on the IPP Personnel Survey. This will be asked to characterize the sample of IPP personnel.
12. Respondent Burden and its Labor Costs
Part A: ESTIMATION OF RESPONDENT BURDEN
Below is an estimate of burden for data collection that directly involves respondents— four collection instruments combined (IPP Personnel Survey, Cohort Study, Supervisor/Leader Interviews, and Integrated Primary Prevention Tracker).
Collection Instrument(s)
[IPP Personnel Survey]
Number of Respondents: 1472
Number of Responses Per Respondent: 1
Number of Total Annual Responses: 1472
Response Time: .5 hour
Respondent Burden Hours: 736 hours
[Cohort Study]
Number of Respondents: 80
Number of Responses Per Respondent: 1
Number of Total Annual Responses: 80
Response Time: 1
Respondent Burden Hours: 80 hours
[Supervisor/Leader Interviews]
Number of Respondents: 80
Number of Responses Per Respondent: 1
Number of Total Annual Responses: 80
Response Time: .5
Respondent Burden Hours: 40 hours
[Integrated Primary Prevention Activity Tracking]
Number of Respondents: 1472
Number of Responses Per Respondent: 2
Number of Total Annual Responses: 2944
Response Time: 1 hour
Respondent Burden Hours: 2944 hours
Total Submission Burden (Summation or average based on collection)
Total Number of Respondents: 1632
Total Number of Annual Responses: 4576
Part B: LABOR COST OF RESPONDENT BURDEN
Below is an estimate of labor cost burden for data collection that directly involves respondents—IPP Personnel Survey, Cohort Study, Supervisor/Leader Interviews, and Integrated Primary Prevention Activity Tracking. Wage rate is an average across the various IPP personnel that will be hired. Salaries were taken from USA Jobs IPP personnel job postings.
Collection Instrument(s)
[IPP Personnel Survey]
Number of Total Annual Responses: 1472
Response Time: .5 hour
Respondent Hourly Wage: $39.75
Labor Burden per Response: $19.88
Total Labor Burden: $29,263
[Cohort Study]
Number of Total Annual Responses: 80
Response Time: 1 hour
Respondent Hourly Wage: $39.75
Labor Burden per Response: $39.75
Total Labor Burden: $3,180
[Supervisor/Leader Interviews]
Number of Total Annual Responses: 80
Response Time: .5 hour
Respondent Hourly Wage: $39.75
Labor Burden per Response: $19.88
Total Labor: $1590
[Integrated Primary Prevention Activity Tracker]
Number of Total Annual Responses: 2944
Response Time: 1 hour
Respondent Hourly Wage: $39.75
Labor Burden per Response: $39.75
Total Labor Burden: $117,024
Overall Labor Burden
Total Number of Annual Responses: 4576
Total Labor Burden: $150,978
13. Respondent Costs Other Than Burden Hour Costs
There are no annualized costs to respondents other than the labor burden costs addressed in Section 12 of this document to complete this collection.
14. Cost to the Federal Government
Part A: LABOR COST TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Collection Instrument(s)
[IPP Personnel Survey, Supervisor/Leader Interviews, Integrated Primary Prevention Activity Tracker] – No Labor cost to the Federal Government. RAND will collect this information from respondents, so there is only respondent burden for these data collections, as outlined below.
Number of Total Annual Responses: 0
Processing Time per Response: 0 hours
Hourly Wage of Worker(s) Processing Responses: 0
Cost to Process Each Response: 0
Total Cost to Process Responses: 0
Overall Labor Burden to the Federal Government
Total Number of Annual Responses: 0
Total Labor Burden: 0
Collection Instrument(s)
[Cohort Study] - This cost is from the time it takes for DoD personnel to arrange the site visits that make up the Cohort Study.
Number of Total Annual Responses: 260
Processing Time per Response: 1 hour
Hourly Wage of Worker(s) Processing Responses: $39.75
Cost to Process Each Response: $39.75
Total Cost to Process Responses: $10,335
Overall Labor Burden to the Federal Government
Total Number of Annual Responses: 260
Total Labor Burden: $10,335
Part B: OPERATIONAL AND MAINTENANCE COSTS
The below costs are the funds DoD is providing to RAND to carry out the evaluation.
Cost Categories
Equipment: $0
Printing: $0
Postage: $0
Software Purchases: $0
Licensing Costs: $0
Other:
Labor – $14,000,000
IPP Personnel Survey programming- $700,000
Computing - $600,556
Gift Cards (IPP Personnel Surveys) - $140,098
Total Operational and Maintenance Cost: $1,440,654
Part C: TOTAL COST TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Total Labor Cost to the Federal Government: $14,000,000
Total Operational and Maintenance Costs: $1,440,654
Total Cost to the Federal Government: $15,440,654
15. Reasons for Change in Burden
This is a new collection with a new associated burden.
16. Publication of Results
The results of this information collection will not be published.
17. Non-Display of OMB Expiration Date
We are not seeking approval to omit the display of the expiration date of the OMB approval on the collection instrument.
18. Exceptions to “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Submissions”
We are not requesting any exemptions to the provisions stated in 5 CFR 1320.9.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Kaitlin Chiarelli |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2026-01-07 |