39 - ESTABLISHING AN INSTITUTIONAL SURVEY OFFICE FOR NAVIGATING DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SURVEY RESEARCH

Background:  Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) staff were unable to provide guidance to Principal Investigators (PIs) regarding Department of Defense (DoD) survey regulations and approval, because the survey approval process was outside of the HRPP. The institution needed a point of contact to navigate the external survey review and approval process.

Program

Description:  A new Survey Coordinator position was created to ensure that all DoD survey regulations have been followed, advise PIs on the survey approval route and timeline, and to serve as a Survey Office point of contact for all stakeholders.

After coordinating with the Navy Survey Office, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Survey Office, the Navy’s Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) Liaison, and staff from the DoD Office of People Analytics (OPA), the Survey Coordinator was able to prepare a detailed SOP for PIs to better understand the complex DoD survey approval process.

Instead of each study’s PI individually reaching out to the various DoD survey approval authorities, PIs were directed to submit their new or modified surveys to the Survey Coordinator, along with a standardized survey information form. The Survey Coordinator would then be able to direct the survey to the correct authority with the standard documents required for approval.

Program

Assessment:  Implementing the new survey review program was an immediate success. Multiple study teams have reached out to voice their appreciation for the survey review program. Providing SOPs, templates, and a subject matter expert (SME) to answer questions lifted the burden from the PIs of reinventing the process for each new survey, and it allowed them to instead focus on performing better quality research.

After five months of tracking survey submissions, the average amount of time required to obtain survey approval from the Navy Survey Office reduced from 9 business days to 2 business days. Similarly, the average amount of time required for approval at the USMC Survey Office reduced from 45 business days to 28 business days. Metrics data for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) via the Navy’s PRA Liaison and for OPA approval times will need more time to mature before they can be analyzed, as we do not yet have enough data points to compare. We do expect to see a reduction in review timelines at those approval authorities as well.

Limitations: For an institution that works primarily with DoD research, the number of submissions for the Survey Coordinator to review can take up a significant amount of time. Due to known staffing shortages at OPA and OMB, the survey review process has experienced some delays regardless of the new institutional survey program. The USMC Survey Office has also recently undergone staffing changes and provided more survey resources, which may account for some reduction in turnaround time.

Discussion:  Researchers working with military populations or with federal employees will need to understand how to navigate the survey approval process across various agencies and military services. Without a point of contact or survey office to provide guidance, researchers will lose time, resources, and could experience delays in conducting their research within established timelines. When institutional leadership provides the necessary resources to establish an internal survey office, it allows for HRPPs to focus on reviewing surveys from human subject research perspectives only, and it allows researchers to collaborate with the survey office to gain survey approval from the proper authorities.