1. Potential Respondent Universe
The target population for the Publication Usage survey consists of all those who receive, request, or access any Medicare publications in the continental United States (fifty states plus the District of Columbia): Examples of publication include, Medicare and You Handbook, Initial Enrollment Package, Your Guide to Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage, Choosing a Medigap Policy: A Guide to Health Insurance for People with Medicare, Your Medicare Benefits, Guide to Choosing a Nursing Home, Guide to Medicare’s Preventive Services, Medicare and Home Health Care, Choosing a Medicare Health Plan: A Guide for People with Medicare, Healthcare Coverage Directory for People with Medicare. We are planning on obtaining 3,800 completed interviews annually.
Records of all Medicare beneficiaries are maintained by CMS.
2. Procedures for Collecting Information
Sample: As previously described, the target population for the Publication Usage survey consists of those who receive, request, or access Medicare publications in the 50 continental United States and the District of Columbia.
The contractor will sample approximately 3,800 respondents, across the selected publications. For each survey we would specify a fixed margin of error (e.g. 5%) and confidence level (e.g., 95%). With an expected response rate of 30% assuming all surveys are completed by telephone or over the Web, a sample of 13,000 is required to achieve 3,800 total completed interviews during the fielding periods. The sample sizes should be large enough for the analysis to describe publication users and compare with other publications (e.g., by age group, caregiver vs. beneficiary, and education level).
The telephone survey will be conducted with participants who call 1800-MEDICARE and request a publication be mailed to them. After beneficiaries receive the publication in the mail, they will be called asked if they would be willing to participate in a survey. In order to conduct telephone surveys, it will be necessary to use a computer assisted telephone interviewing program (CATI). The CATI system catches unlikely or impossible responses, but also errors that might have resulted from simple typographical errors. The CATI program will be modified to meet the project specifications for respondent contact procedures and interview administration and to incorporate changes and updates to the survey.
The web survey will be conducted with participants who go to www.medicare.gov and download a publication. For the web survey, CMS, through its Website, will ask a visitor to participate in a study designed to improve CMS's outreach and educational efforts. Prior to leaving the Website, a link will appear which will take the individuals directly to the online questionnaire if the individual consents to participate in the questionnaire. Upon completion of the questionnaire, individuals will be asked to provide contact information for follow-up purposes.
Data Collection: We will use a questionnaire which has been used in previous years and modified based on findings from previous survey waves. The questionnaire will be modified to measure knowledge and understanding of the Medicare program and its publications. The questionnaire will be approximately 15 minutes in length.
If CMS conducts a survey with beneficiaries who receive the Medicare & You Handbook, the sample of beneficiaries will be coordinated with CMS's mailing of the annual Handbook each October with data collection in October and November. The sample of new beneficiaries receiving the Initial Enrollment Package will be drawn in October and November and coordinated with CMS, using the initial eligibility files provided by the Social Security Administration and maintained by CMS. CMS will draw the two above referenced samples. The sample of beneficiaries who received a publication of interest as a result of their call to 1-800-MEDICARE or accessed a Web-based publication of interest will be conducted between January and June. CMS will collect data on beneficiaries who agreed to participate in the study, and will send data files the contractor every week. The contractor will either draw a sample from each file or use the entire file for telephone interviewing. Each data file will contain the potential respondents’ name, address, and phone number and the publication s/he received. For users who ordered more than one publication, CMS will randomly select only one of the publications ordered.
Respondents will be sent a pre-notification letter to inform them that they will be called by a survey interviewer and to answer some of their questions in advance. The data collection contractor will mail a pre-notification letter (Appendix A) informing sampled individuals of the survey, its voluntary nature, the legislative authority under which the survey is conducted, and Privacy Act provisions.
Within ten days after mailing a consent/privacy letter to a respondent, a telephone interview will be attempted. Consents to participate will be obtained on-line, through the Web, for Web-based pop-up surveys and for Web-based publication users who participate in a telephone survey. Use of on-line consents for Web users will allow CMS to complete these surveys while the Web experience is still relatively current in the user's mind.
Telephone data will be collected using computer assisted telephone interviewing. Interviewers will be trained specifically on the administration of this study and will be monitored throughout the data collection period to ensure data collected is of the highest quality.
Over the course of the project, interviewers will call Medicare beneficiaries and complete the various surveys in either English or Spanish, at the request of the respondent. Data cleaning will take place throughout the data collection period with a final round of data cleaning to occur after the last interviews have been completed. The final clean data will be weighted to account for sample selection and non-response.
3. Methods Used to Maximize Response Rates
To maximize response rates CMS is using a computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) mode of data collection.
To achieve the highest possible response rate to the survey, CMS’s survey contractor will:
Use assisted proxies to help complete interviews with respondents who have hearing or speech impairments. The number of cases to be completed with assisted proxies will be very small, but these beneficiaries are likely to be users of more Medicare services so their input is critical to this task.
Send pre-notification letters to selected respondents. This measure has been shown to increase response rates and also serve as notification to respondents of an up-coming call.
Focus much attention on training interviewers to answer respondent questions. Specific training modules will be designed to prepare interviewers to communicate effectively with seniors and alleviate any concerns respondents may have regarding participation in the study and their Medicare benefits.
Have interviewers available during a wide range of times complete interviews with respondents. Since we will be conducting interviews across the United States, we will have interviewers available from 9am to midnight Eastern time, Monday through Friday, 10am to 9pm Eastern time on Saturday, and noon to 11pm Eastern time on Sunday.
Vary calling times to respondents. In an effort to contact respondents at a time that is convenient for them, the CATI scheduler will track calls to each case and insure that calls are placed to beneficiaries at different times of the day and different days of the week. When a specific appointment time is requested, the scheduler will deliver the case to an interviewer at the appointed time.
Maintain a toll-free telephone number for respondents to call with questions about the study. The toll-free telephone will be answered by a specially trained interviewer during all hours of data collection. During the hours when data collection is not underway, callers will be prompted to leave a message to have their call returned.
After data collection is complete, the data will be weighted to adjust for sampling probability and the effects of non-response. The adjustment steps will include:
Weighting to account for selection of the sample records from the
selected administrative file;
Weighting adjustment to make sampled weights match the number of
eligible beneficiaries;
Weighting adjustment to compensate for non-response in the interview
phase.
Publication Usage data was weighted using the protocol described above.
4. Tests of Procedures or Methods
Most of the questions in the Publication Usage survey are repeated from the 2006 survey.
To analyze the results of the Publication Usage survey, the contractor will review responses from surveys to identify trends and patterns in response. In reports to CMS, the contractor will highlight themes and topics where consistent responses emerge and note areas where respondents were in disagreement. The contractor will then generate data tables using SPSS (or comparable statistical software), which will display data frequencies and statistical output, such as means, standard deviations, variances, etc. The contractor will provide to CMS, breakdowns of the data by wave (year one vs. year two, etc.) and relevant respondent subgroups (e.g. geographic region, demographics, retirement plan behaviors, etc.). All tabulations will show statistically significant differences by sub-group at the 95% confidence level.
5. Contacts for the Publication Usage survey
Chris Koepke
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
CMS/OEA
Mail-Stop: S1-13-05
7500 Security Blvd.
Baltimore, MD 21244
Christopher.K[email protected]
410-486-5877
Frank Funderburk
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
CMS/OEA
Mail-Stop: S1-13-05
7500 Security Blvd.
Baltimore, MD 21244
410-486-1820
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| File Title | Supporting Statement B |
| Subject | Publication Usage |
| Author | CMS/OEA/SRCMG/DR |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-02-03 |