Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS)

This Sources Sought Notice (SS) is for information and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This Notice is a revision of the Sources Sought Notice previously posted on May 7, 2009, and is intended to provide additional details regarding the requirement. THERE IS NOT A SOLICITATION AVAILABLE. THIS IS STRICTLY MARKET RESEARCH. The purpose of this SS is to IDENTIFY QUALIFIED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS including 8(a) companies, Small Disadvantaged Businesses (SDB), Women-owned Small Business (WOSB), Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HuBZone) Small Business, Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) and Service-Disabled Veteran-owned Small Business (SDVOSB) that are interested in and capable of performing the work described herein. The NCI does not intend to award a contract on the basis of responses nor otherwise pay for the preparation of any information submitted. The Behavioral Research Program (BRP), Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB), Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute (NCI) is seeking capability statements from all eligible Small Businesses as state above, under NAICS Code #541910 (Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling) with a size standard $7,000,000 per annum. The NCI, BRP/HCIRB is seeking support in planning, conducting, and analyzing the administration of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 4). To perform the requirements, the contractor must possess sufficient technical, scientific, and operational capabilities for engaging in national surveillance efforts. Summary of Project: The purpose of the ongoing survey is to assess trends in the public's use of health information in an environment of rapidly changing communication and informatics options, and to allow the NCI extramural community access to the data for conducting hypothesis-generating research into the relationship between health information, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. - Survey Design: The Contractor shall, in consultation with the NCI Project Officer, develop a Survey Design Plan for a national sampling frame for the American public that will result in approximately 14,000 interviews of adults aged 18 years or older. - Instrument Design: Using previous iterations of the HINTS questionnaire as a base, while anticipating some changes in content, the Contractor shall develop, revise, format, and finalize an instrument that is designed to elicit valid responses, based on discussions with the Project Officer. The instrument will be designed as a series of topical modules that can be organized into a series of survey instruments that the majority of respondents can complete in 30 minutes or less, and that is appropriate for the selected mode(s) of administration. The Contractor will be responsible for developing both a Spanish and an English language version of the instruments. - Preparation of Materials for OMB Clearance: The Contractor, in consultation with the Project Officer, shall develop and then produce the required paper copies, as well as electronic copies, of all necessary documentation to be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for administrative clearance of HINTS 4 data collection under the Paperwork Reduction Act. - Pretest of Survey Instrument: The survey instrument (including all potential modes of delivery and topic modules) shall be cognitively tested on a sample of English-speaking and Spanish-speaking respondents: to elicit accurate responses to each item, to demonstrate that the instrument and general survey approach are designed to obtain adequate responses, and to ensure that the questions can be answered in the time budgeted for the survey. - Interviewer Hiring and Training: If the proposed survey design involves the use of telephone interviewers, the Contractor shall provide the services of a sufficient number of trained interviewers and other necessary personnel to complete the required number of interviews, and other data collection efforts, within the specified time frame. - Data Collection Procedures: The Contractor shall make use of procedures that are agreed upon by the Contractor Project Director and the NCI Project Officer to constitute best practices in the conduct of sample surveys. NCI recognizes that response rates to surveys are declining, so the Contractor is encouraged to consider any and all mechanisms, including notification letters, monetary reimbursement or other incentives, or alternative modes of data collection (e.g., mixed mode interviews involving the combination of telephone interviews with mail or Internet surveys) to obtain an acceptable response rate. - Data Management: The Contractor shall develop and implement a system to be used to code, edit, clean, and verify and store data as they are collected. Monthly progress reports shall include updates and evaluations of the survey operation, development of the analytical plan, and complete tabular summaries of the interview data as appropriate. At the end of data collection, the Contractor shall provide the NCI a clean file containing data from the interviews and the necessary weighting vectors to enable analyses of data from complex sample surveys. With the final data file, the Contractor shall also supply a - data kit containing hardcopy and electronic documentation that includes: a list of variables, codes, coding rules, edit specifications, edit flags, notes describing any problems with data, and a data dictionary. - Data Analysis: Data analysis activities will be conducted in collaboration with the Project Officer to support the information needs of data users and results users. Analytic activities will include creating a spreadsheet of metadata values to support the development of an online informatics application. The Contractor will be required to create the standardized, electronic coding structures that will be needed to make display of the HINTS data available through the NCI cancer Bioinformatics Grid (caBIG - https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/). - Dissemination: The Contractor shall be responsible for creating and delivering a communication/dissemination plan for promoting use of HINTS data and products. DURATION: It is anticipated that the project will be completed in 48 months. Within the first year, packages for approvals from OMB and the Contractor's IRB will be completed. CAPABILITY CRITERIA: Capabilities will be judged based on the following criteria: 1) Method/Approach: HINTS is distinct from other communication surveys in its close alliance with the principles and capacities needed to support a national surveillance effort. Qualified entities must demonstrate prior experience with national surveillance efforts which adhere closely to high standards for data reporting as set forth by the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). Qualified entities must demonstrate corporate experience and superior understanding of the technical, scientific, and operational problems, and solutions to such problems, associated with national surveillance including expertise in area probability sampling, telephone surveys using random digit dialing (RDD), computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), data weighting, data imputation, automated variance estimation, production of nationally representative estimates, and standardized, electronic coding structures that will be needed to make display of the HINTS data available through the NCI cancer Bioinformatics Grid (caBIG - https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/). 2) Corporate Experience and Resources: Corporate experience and available resources and facilities necessary in the area of national survey research, cancer communication research, and studies that involve developing questionnaires, especially those targeting health knowledge and health information among the general adult population. Qualified offerors must demonstrate experience and capacity to build a multi-year, omnibus style surveillance infrastructure program that conforms to national standards for surveillance programs. Demonstrated corporate experience and resources in the design and analysis of national surveys is essential. Qualified entities must demonstrate corporate experience in ongoing infrastructure development for programmatic lines of research. Specific corporate experience with the following is required: a) national sample design, b) development and testing survey instruments with a health, cancer, and communication focus, c) Corporate experience and resources for pursuing data collection through multiple means (e.g. telephone, mail, in-person, web-based) to ensure adequate response rates is required. This research requires a specialized knowledge in developing metadata according to specifications for UML (unified modeling language) modeling; acknowledgement of privacy issues when creating internal repositories of de-identified data; coordination with Open-Geographic Information System consortium standards in preparing data for display on geographic information system maps; coordinating data elements within nationally recognized ontologies (e.g., NCI's Enterprise Vocabulary System); harmonizing data structures within and across surveys; and adhering to technical standards for XML / XMI system compatibility. 3) Personnel: The contractor shall provide the necessary support staff to carry out all aspects of the work scope. This may include a project manager, survey operations manager(s), statistician(s), programmer/analyst(s), technical support personnel, and administrative support. Specifically, personnel must demonstrate superior knowledge of and experience with statistical sample design, developing and testing survey instruments with health, cancer, or communication focus, and complex sample survey weighting to create national estimates. Methodological and statistical expertise and demonstrated leadership in national surveillance, including national data collection, data weighting and imputation, and automated variance estimation, are required. Interested qualified small business organizations should submit a capability statement, not to exceed 15 total single-spaced pages using a 12 point font size at a minimum, that clearly details the ability to perform and that addresses the specific requirements described above. All proprietary information should be marked as such. Statements should also include an indication of current certified small business status; this indication should be clearly marked on the first page of your capability statement (preferably placed under the eligible small business concern's name and address). Responses will be reviewed only by NIH personnel and will be held in a confidential manner. All capability statements sent in response to this SOURCES SOUGHT notice must be submitted electronically (via email) to Stacy Hollis, Contract Specialist at: holliss@mail.nih.gov either in MS Word, Wordperfect or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) not later than August 28, 2009, 3:30 PM EST. All responses must be received by the specified due date and time in order to be considered. ANY RESPONSES RECEIVED AFTER THAT DATE AND TIME WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.