[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 41 (Monday, March 3, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 11789-11791]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-04566]


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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION


Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; 
Comment Request

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission (``Commission'' or ``FTC'').

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The FTC intends to conduct an evaluation of Admongo, its 
advertising literacy program for children ages 8--12. The evaluation 
will involve a randomized controlled trial of the Admongo online game, 
using an internet panel recruited by a market research company. This 
research will be conducted to further the FTC's mission of protecting 
consumers from unfair and deceptive marketing. We will consider 
comments on this proposed research before submitting a request for 
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review under the Paperwork 
Reduction Act (PRA).

DATES: Comments must be submitted on or before May 2, 2014.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file a comment online or on paper, by 
following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Write ``Admongo Evaluation, 
FTC File No. P085200'' on your comment, and file your comment online at 
https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/admongoevaluationpra, by 
following the instructions on the web-based form. If you prefer to file 
your comment on paper, mail or deliver your comment to the following 
address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, Room H-113 
(Annex J), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20580.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David Givens, Economist, Bureau of 
Economics, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Mail 
Stop NJ-4136, Washington, DC 20580. Telephone: (202) 326-3397.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

I. Background

    As the nation's consumer protection agency, the FTC is responsible 
for enforcing laws that prohibit unfair and deceptive advertising and 
marketing practices. Part of this mission involves educating consumers, 
including young consumers. In April 2010, the FTC launched a youth-
directed multi-media advertising literacy campaign called Admongo and 
distributed accompanying lesson plans to 100,000 educators in every 
U.S. public school with a fifth or sixth grade class. The Admongo 
program aims to help children from 8 to 12 become more discerning 
consumers of information. The program has three broad objectives: (1) 
Raising awareness of advertising and marketing messages; (2) teaching 
critical thinking skills that will help children analyze and interpret 
advertisements;

[[Page 11790]]

and (3) demonstrating the benefits of being an informed consumer. The 
program is designed to teach students specific skills: how to identify 
ads, how to identify the ways advertisers target certain groups of 
consumers, how to spot persuasive techniques commonly employed by ads, 
and how to apply an understanding of advertising techniques to make 
smarter purchases. The campaign includes an online game, in-school 
lesson plans, training videos for teachers, and sample ads that can be 
used at home and in the classroom.
    The public can utilize individual components of Admongo as desired, 
or alternatively, schools can integrate all the components to build a 
cohesive unit on advertising literacy. All materials are free and can 
be viewed at www.admongo.gov.
    The proposed evaluation is designed to assess the impact of the 
Admongo online game. The game is an interactive teaching tool in which 
players advance levels by mastering progressively more sophisticated 
topics in advertising. Players start by identifying ads, including 
logos and product placement; they advance to learning about the 
elements of advertising (graphics, copy, video and audio) and then how 
ads are targeted. The game culminates in players creating their own 
video ad to target a specific audience.
    The proposed evaluation seeks to measure the effect of playing the 
Admongo game on a child's level of advertising literacy, as measured by 
a test specially written for this purpose by FTC staff. The online game 
is the one component of the Admongo program that children can most 
easily discover, engage with, and learn from on their own. The FTC 
would like to evaluate the effectiveness of the online game. Cost 
effectiveness data will enable FTC staff to evaluate both this program 
and the potential use of other similar programs in the future. The FTC 
is particularly interested in the effect of game play on the ability to 
interpret real ads (i.e., to differentiate explicit and implied claims, 
to identify particular persuasive techniques and understand why they 
were chosen, etc.), as well as the ways in which this effect varies by 
age and other family and demographic characteristics.

II. Paperwork Reduction Act

    Under the PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501-3521, federal agencies must obtain 
approval (``clearance'') from OMB for each collection of information 
they conduct or sponsor. ``Collection of information'' includes 
disclosure to an agency, third parties, or the public of information by 
or for an agency through identical questions posed to, or identical 
reporting, recordkeeping, or disclosure requirements imposed on, ten or 
more persons. 44 U.S.C. 3502(3)(A). As required by section 
3506(c)(2)(A) of the PRA, the FTC is providing an opportunity for 
public comment before seeking OMB clearance for the information 
collections presented here.
    The FTC invites comments on: (1) Whether the proposed collection of 
information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of 
the agency, including whether the information will have practical 
utility; (2) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the 
proposed collection of information, including the validity of the 
methodology and assumptions used; (3) ways to enhance the quality, 
utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (4) ways 
to minimize the burden of the collection of information.

A. Description of the collection of information and proposed use

    Subject to OMB approval, the FTC will conduct a randomized trial of 
the Admongo online game, involving 800 students, ages 8-12. A market 
research contractor will select students for participation from among 
its existing panelists. Students must have parental permission to 
participate in the evaluation. A randomly selected half of the 
participants will be assigned to a treatment group, and the remaining 
students will be assigned to a control group.
    Treatment students will be instructed to play the Admongo online 
game from their homes for one hour and then to complete an advertising 
literacy test (also online) within the allotted time (20 minutes). To 
ensure that each treatment student's true exposure to the game is 
accurately recorded, her time spent playing (and other measures of her 
performance within the game) will be monitored and logged by the game's 
server. Control students will be instructed to take the test without 
playing the Admongo game. To ensure that control group members do not 
play the game, no mention will be made to these students about the 
existence of Admongo or its connection to the test they are instructed 
to take. To further ensure the integrity of the evaluation, the market 
research company will screen out any panelist who has been exposed to 
Admongo prior to this study.
    Admongo's effect on ad literacy will be estimated from the 
difference in test scores between the control and treatment groups. 
Additional variables measuring demographic, financial, and family 
characteristics of the students, to the extent this information can be 
captured through a screening questionnaire that is administered to 
participants' parents, will increase the precision of the estimate of 
Admongo's impact and also will reveal the influence of these factors on 
ad literacy.
    The sample will be selected to mirror the 8-12 year-old U.S. 
population along a number of observable dimensions. However, because 
participation in the study is voluntary, the sample may suffer from 
selection bias and may not constitute a nationally representative 
sample of 8-12 year-old American children. Therefore, the estimate of 
Admongo's impact, derived from this sample, will not generalize to the 
broader audience of all 8-12 year-old Americans.

B. Estimated Burden Hours

    The proposed evaluation will involve 800 students ages 8-12. The 
half of the sample assigned to the treatment group will play the 
Admongo online game for one hour and then take a 20-minute advertising 
literacy test immediately afterwards. The time burden for the 
treatment-group totals 533 hours. The half of the sample assigned to 
the control group will take the quiz without playing the game. The time 
burden for the control group will be only the time required to take the 
test--133 hours in total. Finally, a parent of each participating 
student will be asked to complete a screening questionnaire, estimated 
to take 5 minutes. The aggregate time burden from the questionnaire 
totals 67 hours. Therefore, the total time burden for all participants 
equals 733 hours.

C. Estimated Costs

    The costs to respondents involve only the time cost of playing the 
Admongo online game and/or taking the online advertising literacy test. 
Participation in the evaluation is voluntary; respondents are drawn 
from existing pools of internet panelists (i.e., households that have 
already indicated they are willing and able to take part in internet 
research), and participants and their parents are free to refuse the 
invitation to participate in any particular study. All students (or 
their parents) will be compensated at the standard rate by the market 
research company that recruits them and runs the experiment. Treatment-
group students are expected to be compensated more than control-group 
students due to the former group's substantially larger time 
commitment.

D. Request For Comment

    You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to 
consider

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your comment, we must receive it on or before May 2, 2014. Write 
``Admongo Evaluation, FTC File No. P085200'' on your comment. Your 
comment, including your name and your state, will be placed on the 
public record of this proceeding, including, to the extent practicable, 
on the public Commission Web site, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. As a matter of discretion, the Commission tries to 
remove individuals' home contact information from comments before 
placing them on the Commission Web site.
    Because your comment will be made public, you are solely 
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any 
sensitive personal information, like anyone's Social Security number, 
date of birth, driver's license number or other state identification 
number or foreign country equivalent, passport number, financial 
account number, or credit or debit card number. You are also solely 
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any 
sensitive health information, like medical records or other 
individually identifiable health information. In addition, do not 
include any ``[t]rade secret or any commercial or financial information 
which . . . is privileged or confidential,'' as discussed in Section 
6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 
4.10(a)(2). In particular, do not include competitively sensitive 
information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas, 
patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.
    If you want the Commission to give your comment confidential 
treatment, you must file it in paper form, with a request for 
confidential treatment, and you have to follow the procedure explained 
in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).\1\ Your comment will be kept 
confidential only if the FTC General Counsel grants your request in 
accordance with the law and the public interest.
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    \1\ In particular, the written request for confidential 
treatment that accompanies the comment must include the factual and 
legal basis for the request, and must identify the specific portions 
of the comment to be withheld from the public record. See FTC Rule 
4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).
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    Postal mail addressed to the Commission is subject to delay due to 
heightened security screening. As a result, we encourage you to submit 
your comments online. To make sure that the Commission considers your 
online comment, you must file it at http://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/admongoevaluationpra, by following the instructions on the web-
based form. If this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov/#home, 
you also may file a comment through that Web site.
    If you file your comment on paper, write ``Admongo Evaluation, FTC 
File No. P085200'' on your comment and on the envelope, and mail or 
deliver it to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office 
of the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex J), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., 
Washington, DC 20580. If possible, submit your paper comment to the 
Commission by courier or overnight service.
    Visit the Commission Web site at http://www.ftc.gov to read this 
Notice and the news release describing it. The FTC Act and other laws 
that the Commission administers permit the collection of public 
comments to consider and use in this proceeding as appropriate. The 
Commission will consider all timely and responsive public comments that 
it receives on or before May 2, 2014. You can find more information, 
including routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, in the 
Commission's privacy policy, at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.htm.

    By direction of the Commission.
Janice Podoll Frankle,
Acting Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2014-04566 Filed 2-28-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6750-01-P