R422--Research Services - Survey Data for Impact of Moral Injury - Pre-Solicitaiton Notice wht Intent to Sole Source

Pre-Solicitation Notice for notice of intent to award a sole source contract. This is not a solicitation. The Department of Veterans Affairs intends to negotiate a sole source contract for a one (1) year base period firm fixed priced purchase order with IPSOS Public Affairs, LLC located at 301 Merritt 7, Norwalk CT 06851 to provide a mixed method research survey study to determine the US Veteran population prevalence of moral injury for the Boston VA Healthcare System, Research Department.

Ipsos Public Affairs, LLC ( Ipsos ) uniquely maintains the largest, longest standing, all-online, probability-based panel, known as KnowledgePanel. Ipsos has a long history of successfully surveying Veterans on KnowledgePanel. KnowledgePanel is the oldest and largest probability-based online survey panel in the United States and Ipsos has pre-identified Veterans on KnowledgePanel that can be used for the project. This will save the VA Boston Healthcare System time and money. This research project requires the use of the on-line KnowledgePanel database to provide a random selection of research subjects. As an entirely online panel, KnowledgePanel eliminates mode effects and allows the use of graphics, audio, and video clips, and for a portion of the panel video recordings of participants responses to survey questions. KnowledgePanel includes representation of the roughly 8%-12% of U.S. households that do not have Internet access.

The VA investigators need to utilize this specialized database platform for their on-going research and data analysis. Accordingly, Ipsos Public Affairs, LLC is the only firm capable of providing the supplies and services without the Veteran s Health Administration experiencing substantial duplication of cost that could not be expected to be recovered through competition and unacceptable delays in fulfilling its requirements.

Since the intent is to procure this on a sole source basis, no solicitation will be posted to FedBizOps (FBO). The applicable NAICS code is 541910 with a $22.5MIL size standard. The PSC is AN21. The authority for this action is FAR 6.302.1-1 Only One Responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

Interested persons may contact the Contracting Officer via email at annmarie.stewart@va.gov regarding this procurement. The determination to conduct a competitive procurement based on responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Contracting Officer.