32470 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 109 / Tuesday, June 8, 2010 / Notices 

1The comment must be accompanied by an 

explicit request for confidential treatment, 

including the factual and legal basis for the request, 

and must identify the specific portions of the 

comment to be withheld from the public record. 

The request will be granted or denied by the 

Commission’s General Counsel, consistent with 

applicable law and the public interest. See FTC 

Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c). 

The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. and 

is expected to conclude at 12:30 p.m. 

The Martin Building is located on C 

Street, NW., between 20th and 21st 

Streets. 

The Council’s function is to advise 

the Board on the exercise of the Board’s 

responsibilities under various consumer 

financial services laws and on other 

matters on which the Board seeks its 

advice. Time permitting, the Council 

will discuss the following topics: 

• Home Mortgage Disclosure Act 

(HMDA) 

In the context of the Board’s review of 

Regulation C, which implements 

HMDA, members will discuss whether 

the 2002 revisions to Regulation C, 

which required lenders to report 

mortgage pricing data, helped provide 

useful and accurate information about 

the mortgage market; the need for 

additional data and other 

improvements; and what emerging 

issues in the mortgage market may 

warrant additional research. 

• Community Reinvestment Act 

(CRA) 

Members will discuss the future of the 

Community Reinvestment Act, 

including possible changes in light of 

developments in the financial services 

industry and issues associated with the 

foreclosure crisis. 

• Foreclosure Issues 

Members will discuss loss-mitigation 

efforts, including the Administration’s 

Making Home Affordable program, 

neighborhood stabilization initiatives 

and challenges, and other issues related 

to foreclosures. 

Reports by committees and other 

matters initiated by Council members 

also may be discussed. 

Persons wishing to submit views to 

the Council on any of the above topics 

may do so by sending written 

statements to Jennifer Kerslake, 

Secretary of the Consumer Advisory 

Council, Division of Consumer and 

Community Affairs, Board of Governors 

of the Federal Reserve System, 

Washington, DC 20551. Information 

about this meeting may be obtained 

from Ms. Kerslake at 202–452–6470. 

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System, June 3, 2010. 

Jennifer J. Johnson, 

Secretary of the Board. 

[FR Doc. 2010–13650 Filed 6–7–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE P 

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 

Agency Information Collection 

Activities; Submission for OMB 

Review; Comment Request 

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission 

(‘‘FTC’’ or ‘‘Commission’’). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: The FTC intends to conduct 

an exploratory study on consumer 

susceptibility to fraudulent and 

deceptive marketing. This research will 

be conducted to further the FTC’s 

mission of protecting consumers from 

unfair and deceptive marketing. Before 

gathering this information, the FTC is 

seeking public comments on its 

proposed research. The information 

collection requirements described below 

are being submitted to the Office of 

Management and Budget (‘‘OMB’’) for 

review, as required by the Paperwork 

Reduction Act (‘‘PRA’’). 

DATES: Comments must be submitted on 

or before July 8, 2010. 

ADDRESSES: Interested parties are 

invited to submit written comments 

electronically or in paper form by 

following the instructions in the 

Request for Comments part of the 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section 

below. Comments in electronic form 

should be submitted by using the 

following weblink: (https:// 

public.commentworks.com/ftc/ 

fraudexperiment2) and following the 

instructions on the web-based form). 

Comments filed in paper form should 

refer to ‘‘Fraud Susceptibility 

Experiment, FTC File No. P095501,’’ 

both in the text and on the envelope, 

and should be mailed or delivered to the 

following address: Federal Trade 

Commission, Office of the Secretary, 

Room H-135 (Annex J), 600 

Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., 

Washington, DC 20580, in the manner 

detailed in the SUPPLEMENTARY

INFORMATION section below. 

All comments should additionally be 

submitted to: Office of Information and 

Regulatory Affairs, Office of 

Management and Budget, Attention: 

Desk Officer for the Federal Trade 

Commission. Comments should be 

submitted via facsimile to (202) 395- 

5167 because U.S. postal mail at the 

OMB is subject to delays due to 

heightened security precautions. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Requests for additional information 

should be addressed to Patrick 

McAlvanah, Economist, Bureau of 

Economics, Federal Trade Commission, 

600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Mail 

Stop NJ-4136, Washington, DC 20580. 

Telephone: (202) 326-2974; e-mail: 

(fraudexperiment@ftc.gov). 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Request for Comments: 

Interested parties are invited to 

submit written comments electronically 

or in paper form. Comments should 

refer to ‘‘Fraud Susceptibility 

Experiment, FTC File No. P095501’’ to 

facilitate the organization of comments. 

Please note that your comment — 

including your name and your state — 

will be placed on the public record of 

this proceeding, including on the 

publicly accessible FTC Website, at 

(http://www.ftc.gov/os/ 

publiccomments.shtm). 

Because comments will be made 

public, they should not include any 

sensitive personal information, such as 

an individual’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. Comments 

also should not include any sensitive 

health information, such as medical 

records or other individually 

identifiable health information. In 

addition, comments should not include 

any ‘‘[t]rade secret or any commercial or 

financial information which is obtained 

from any person and which is privileged 

or confidential’’ as provided in Section 

6(f) of the Federal Trade Commission 

Act (‘‘FTC Act’’), 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and 

FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 4.10(a)(2). 

Comments containing material for 

which confidential treatment is 

requested must be filed in paper form, 

must be clearly labeled ‘‘Confidential,’’ 

and must comply with FTC Rule 4.9(c), 

16 CFR 4.9(c).1

Because paper mail addressed to the 

FTC is subject to delay due to 

heightened security screening, please 

consider submitting your comments in 

electronic form. Comments filed in 

electronic form should be submitted by 

using the following weblink: (https:// 

public.commentworks.com/ftc/ 

fraudexperiment2) (and following the 

instructions on the web-based form). To 

ensure that the Commission considers 

an electronic comment, you must file it 

on the web-based form at the weblink: 

(https://public.commentworks.com/ftc/ 

fraudexperiment2). If this Notice 


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Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 109 / Tuesday, June 8, 2010 / Notices 32471 

2 74 FR 27794. 

3 Information on the Fraud Forum is available at: 

(http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/fraudforum/ 

index.shtm). 

4The Commission has published two staff reports 

describing the results of these surveys – Consumer 

Fraud in the United States: An FTC Survey 

(published August 2004 and available at (http:// 

www.ftc.gov/reports/consumerfraud/ 

040805confraudrpt.pdf) and Consumer Fraud in the 

United States: The Second FTC Survey (published 

in October 2007 and available at (http:// 

www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/10/fraud.pdf). 

5Staff has contracted with a faculty member of 

George Mason University who will recruit the study 

subjects and oversee and administer the 

experiment. 

6Staff plans to use financial literacy and 

numeracy measures such as in James Banks and Zoe 

Oldfield, Understanding Pensions: Cognitive 

Function, Numerical Ability and Retirement Saving, 

Fiscal Studies, 2007, 28 (2). 

appears at (http://www.regulations.gov/ 

search/Regs/home.html#home), you 

may also file an electronic comment 

through that website. The Commission 

will consider all comments that 

regulations.gov forwards to it. 

A comment filed in paper form 

should include the ‘‘Fraud 

Susceptibility Experiment, FTC File No. 

P095501’’ reference both in the text and 

on the envelope, and should be mailed 

or delivered to the following address: 

Federal Trade Commission, Office of the 

Secretary, Room H-135 (Annex J), 600 

Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, 

DC 20580. The FTC is requesting that 

any comment filed in paper form be sent 

by courier or overnight service, if 

possible, because U.S. postal mail in the 

Washington area and at the Commission 

is subject to delay due to heightened 

security precautions. 

The FTC Act and other laws 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, 

whether filed in paper or electronic 

form. Comments received will be 

available to the public on the FTC 

Website, to the extent practicable, at 

(http://www.ftc.gov/os/ 

publiccomments.shtm). As a matter of 

discretion, the Commission makes every 

effort to remove home contact 

information for individuals from the 

public comments it receives before 

placing those comments on the FTC 

Website. More information, including 

routine uses permitted by the Privacy 

Act, may be found in the FTC’s privacy 

policy, at (http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/ 

privacy.shtm). 

On June 11, 2009, the FTC sought 

comment on the information collection 

requirements associated with the 

proposed Fraud Susceptibility 

Experiment study.2 No comments were 

received. Pursuant to the OMB 

regulations, 5 CFR Part 1320, that 

implement the PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501- 

3521, the Commission is providing this 

second opportunity for public comment. 

All comments should be filed as 

prescribed in the ADDRESSES section 

above, and must be received on or 

before July 8, 2010. 

Background Information: 

As part of its consumer protection 

mission, the FTC has brought hundreds 

of cases targeting fraud, and has 

committed significant resources to 

educational initiatives designed to 

protect consumers. The Commission 

hosted a Fraud Forum3 on February 25- 

26, 2009 to examine fraud in the market 

place. The Commission has also 

conducted telephone surveys in 2003 

and 2005 designed to measure the 

proportion of the U.S. adult population 

that has fallen victim to various 

consumer frauds.4 Despite this, 

surprisingly little is known about what 

determines consumers’ susceptibility to 

fraud. For example, the 2003 and 2005 

FTC consumer fraud surveys found that 

education was not a significant 

predictor of fraud victimization. 

Understanding when and why people 

are vulnerable to fraud would better 

inform the FTC’s substantial, ongoing 

efforts to fight fraud through law 

enforcement and consumer education. 

Additional insights into how and why 

people fall victim to fraud could also 

help improve any future fraud surveys 

the Commission may undertake. The 

study announced in this notice is a 

preliminary and exploratory step toward 

facilitating those efforts. The study is 

not intended to lead to enforcement 

actions; rather, study results may aid the 

FTC’s efforts to better target its 

enforcement actions and consumer 

education initiatives, and improve 

future fraud surveys. 

Economic and psychological 

experiments have identified several 

decision-making biases, such as 

impulsivity, over-confidence, overoptimism, and loss aversion, that can 

cause inaccurate assessments of the 

risks, costs, and benefits of various 

choices. FTC staff proposes to conduct 

an economic laboratory experiment to 

study whether these types of decision 

biases are related to consumer 

susceptibility to fraudulent or deceptive 

marketing claims. Staff intends to study 

consumers’ assessment of potentially 

deceptive advertisements, in addition to 

their assessment of non-deceptive 

advertisements. Staff seeks to 

understand which characteristics of 

individuals and advertisements predict 

consumers’ ability to differentiate 

between apparently fraudulent materials 

and apparently legitimate materials. 

Pursuant to the OMB regulations, 5 

CFR Part 1320, that implement the PRA, 

44 U.S.C. 3501-21, the FTC is providing 

this opportunity for public comment 

while requesting that OMB approve the 

study. Under the PRA, federal agencies 

must obtain OMB approval for each 

collection of information they conduct 

or sponsor. ‘‘Collection of information’’ 

means agency requests or requirements 

that members of the public submit 

reports, keep records, or provide 

information to a third party. 44 U.S.C. 

3502(3); 5 CFR 1320.3(c). All comments 

should be filed as prescribed in the 

ADDRESSES section above, and must be 

received on or before July 8, 2010. 

A. Description of the collection of 

information and proposed use 

The FTC proposes to conduct an 

experiment in a university’s economics 

laboratory with 250 subjects drawn from 

the campus community.5 A sample of 

250 persons enables random assignment 

of subjects into different experimental 

conditions of sufficient size for analytic 

power. The sample is not intended to be 

nationally representative, but will still 

provide useful insights into consumer 

susceptibility to fraud. In addition, five 

to ten of these subjects will participate 

in a pretest. Pretest subjects will 

participate in an in-person interview 

about the clarity and comprehensibility 

of the instructions. 

The study will gauge consumer 

attitudes towards legitimate and 

potentially fraudulent or deceptive 

advertisements. Staff plans to ask 

subjects to examine advertisements for 

fraudulent products and report their 

opinion about the credibility of the 

advertisements. Staff also plans to ask 

participants to rate the credibility of 

advertisements for apparently legitimate 

products to gauge how participants 

distinguish between apparently 

fraudulent product claims and 

legitimate product claims. Staff plans to 

measure consumer knowledge, risk 

attitudes, impatience, and skepticism 

using existing methods from economics 

and psychology research. Staff intends 

to measure consumer knowledge using 

consumer literacy, financial literacy, 

and numeracy questions6 in order to test 

subjects’ marketplace understanding 

and sophistication. Staff seeks to 

determine if people with such 

knowledge deem fraudulent 

advertisements to be less credible than 

legitimate advertisements. Staff plans to 

measure subjects’ risk attitudes through 


emcdonald on DSK2BSOYB1PROD with NOTICES
32472 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 109 / Tuesday, June 8, 2010 / Notices 

7Staff intends to use standard risk aversion 

measurement methodologies akin to those in 

Charles Holt and Susan Laury, Risk Aversion and 

Incentive Effects, American Economic Review, 

December 2002, 1644-1655. 

8Several academic articles report that people are 

more willing to take identical risks over monetary 

gambles if the risk is presented as an opportunity 

to escape losses rather than as a chance to gain. Our 

‘‘framing’’ methodologies emulate those in Amos 

Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, The Framing of 

Decisions and the Psychology of Choice, Science, 

Vol. 211, No. 4481 (Jan. 30, 1981), 453-458. 

9Staff intends to use methodology similar to that 

in Stephan Meier and Charles Sprenger, PresentBiased Preferences and Credit Card Borrowing, 

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 

2010, 2:1, 193-210. 

10Staff plans to use standard questions similar to 

those in Manju Puri and David Robinson, Optimism 

and Economic Choice, Journal of Financial 

Economics, 2007, Vol. 86, 71-99. 

11Staff plans to use the scale developed in Carl 

Obermiller and Eric Spangenberg, Development of 

a Scale to Measure Consumer Skepticism toward 

Advertising, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 

7, No. 2, 1998, 159-186. 

a series of choices between smaller 

certain amounts of money or larger risky 

amounts.7 Staff intends to describe the 

product to some subjects as creating 

benefits, while presenting to other 

subjects nearly identical information 

depicted as a reduction in harm. Staff 

intends to then test whether risk-averse 

and loss-averse subjects are particularly 

susceptible to fraudulent claims framed 

as opportunities to escape losses.8 Staff 

plans to measure subjects’ impatience 

through a series of choices between 

smaller monetary amounts received 

sooner or larger amounts but received 

later.9 Staff would then test to see if 

impatient subjects are more susceptible 

to fraudulent claims. Staff also plans to 

elicit measures of optimism 10 and 

skepticism 11 to determine their roles in 

deeming advertisements, both of 

fraudulent and legitimate products, as 

credible. In addition, staff intends to 

collect demographic and background 

information from the surveyed subjects. 

The FTC has contracted with the faculty 

of a university-run experimental 

economics laboratory to locate and 

recruit subjects and conduct the 

experiments. 

Staff will pre-test the experimental 

procedures with up to ten subjects to 

ensure that the instructions provided to 

participants are clear and 

comprehensible, and that the 

experimental procedures are workable. 

Pre-test subjects will be drawn from the 

same university subject pool as the 

experiment’s subjects. 

B. Estimated Hours Burden 

The FTC plans to seek information 

from up to 250 respondents for 

approximately 90 minutes each. 

Allowing for pre-testing of the 

instructions on as many as 10 

respondents, at an additional 30 

minutes apiece, cumulative burden, 

inclusive of the pre-testing, will total 

approximately 380 hours. 

C. Estimated Costs Burden 

The cost per respondent should be 

negligible. Participation will not require 

start-up, capital, or labor expenditures 

by respondents. The above-noted 

contractor will recruit the student and 

community member subjects to 

participate in this study; subjects will be 

asked to respond to an initial 

recruitment email to participate 

voluntarily. Staff will compensate all 

subjects for their participation in the 90- 

minute study. Subjects will receive 

approximately $8 as a show-up fee; in 

addition, they will have the opportunity 

to earn more during the course of the 

study based upon their responses to 

various questions. Staff expects that 

subjects will earn an average of $30 each 

for their participation in the 90 minute 

study, and that most subjects will earn 

between $20 and $40. 

David C. Shonka 

Acting General Counsel 

[FR Doc. 2010–13691 Filed 6–7–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6750–01–S 

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND 

HUMAN SERVICES 

Office of the National Coordinator for 

Health Information Technology; HIT 

Standards Committee; Notice and 

Publication of Committee 

Recommendations to the National 

Coordinator for Health Information 

Technology 

AGENCY: Office of the National 

Coordinator for Health Information 

Technology, HHS. 

ACTION: Notice of committee 

recommendations and invitation for 

public input. 

SUMMARY: This notice publishes 

recommendations made by the HIT 

Standards Committee (Committee) at its 

public meeting on April 28, 2010, and 

invites public input on the 

recommendations at the Committee’s 

next meeting on June 30, 2010. The 

Committee is a federal advisory 

committee to the Office of the National 

Coordinator for Health Information 

Technology (ONC). 

Name of Committee: HIT Standards 

Committee. 

General Function of the Committee: 

To provide recommendations to the 

National Coordinator on standards, 

implementation specifications, and 

certification criteria for the electronic 

exchange and use of health information 

for purposes of adoption, consistent 

with the implementation of the Federal 

Health IT Strategic Plan, and in 

accordance with policies developed by 

the HIT Policy Committee. Sections 

3003(b)(4) and (e) of the Health 

Information Technology for Economic 

and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act 

requires ONC to publish the 

Committee’s recommendations to the 

National Coordinator in the Federal 

Register and on ONC’s Web site. 

Contact Person: Judith Sparrow, 

Office of the National Coordinator, HHS, 

330 C Street, SW., Washington, DC 

20201, 202–205–4528, Fax: 202–690– 

6079, e-mail: judy.sparrow@hhs.gov. 

Recommendations: During the April 

28, 2010 meeting, the Committee’s 

recommendations focused on standards 

for governance, funding and 

infrastructure of controlled 

vocabularies, value sets and vocabulary 

subsets to be used primarily to further 

interoperability between providers and 

the systems they deploy as defined by 

the various stages of Meaningful Use 

Objectives. The recommendations may 

be found at http://healthit.hhs.gov/ 

standardscommittee. 

Procedure: Individuals wishing to 

make comments on the Committee’s 

April 28, 2010, recommendations may 

present oral comments at the 

Committee’s next meeting on June 30, 

2010, from approximately 1 p.m. to 2 

p.m., e.t., at the Marriott Hotel 

Washington, 1221 22nd Street, NW., 

Washington, DC 20037. Comments will 

be limited to two (2) minutes per 

person. A separate notice announcing 

this meeting has been published in the 

Federal Register and provides 

additional information. 

Authority: Sections 3003(b)(4) and (e) of 

Health Information Technology for Economic 

and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, Title XIII 

of Division A of the American Recovery and 

Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Pub. L. 

No. 111–5. 

Dated: June 2, 2010. 

Judith Sparrow, 

Office of Programs and Coordination, Office 

of the National Coordinator for Health 

Information Technology. 

[FR Doc. 2010–13683 Filed 6–7–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4150–45–P 


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