Letter to Margo Schwab

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Public Health Service

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

National Center for Health Statistics

3311 Toledo Road

Hyattsville, Maryland 20782

January 21, 2010

Margo Schwab, Ph.D.

Office of Management and Budget

725 17th Street, N.W.

Washington, DC 20503

Dear Dr. Schwab:

The staff of the NCHS Questionnaire Design Research Laboratory (QDRL) plans to conduct research to continue to evaluate international disability questions for Washington Group on Disability Statistics, a city group that operates under the aegis of the UN Statistical Commission. NCHS serves as the secretariat and Chair of the Steering Committee. The Steering Committee has been charged with developing a set of questions that would provide internationally comparable data. Thus far, the QDRL has tested various sets of questions. The first were described in a letter to OMB dated December 21, 2005 and conducted in January and February 2006. The next were described in a letter to OMB dated October 23, 2008 and conducted in January and March 2009.

We propose to start advertising for volunteer participants as soon as we receive clearance and to start testing as soon as possible after that.

Background Information about Cognitive Testing of Questionnaires

The methodological design of this proposed study is consistent with the design of typical cognitive testing research. As you know, the purpose of cognitive testing is to obtain information about the processes people use to answer survey questions as well as to identify any potential problems in the questions. The analysis will be qualitative.

Proposed project: Washington Group International Disability Questions

This project will conform to the usual QDRL procedures for cognitive testing of a questionnaire module.

The aim of these cognitive interviews is to study how people from various countries interpret and process the questions, so that we can then conduct a joint, coordinated analysis to see if questions are processed similarly across all participating countries.

We propose to recruit 30 adults (aged 18 years and older) through a combination of a newspaper advertisement, flyers, or by contacting respondents from past QDRL projects who have expressed an interested in participating in upcoming projects. The newspaper advertisement/flyer is shown in Attachment 1. The newspaper advertisement/flyer will be used to recruit respondents who experience pain or depression and/or have difficulty learning, remembering, or speaking. For comparative purposes, we will recruit several respondents who do not meet these criteria. These respondents will be recruited by word-of-mouth or through our database of respondents who have participated in past studies and have expressed an interest in participating in upcoming projects. Within these constraints, we hope to recruit participants with some demographic variety (particularly in terms of gender, education, race/ethnicity, and income).

Interviews will be conducted in the QDRL with as many as 30 respondents for 60 minutes each. With the consent of the participants, the interviews will be recorded on videotape or audiotape. Participants will be informed of taping procedures (including observation if applicable) in the process of reviewing the consent forms, and the equipment will be turned on once it is clear that the procedures are understood and agreed upon.

The testing instrument is shown in Attachment 2. At the end of the interviews, participants will be paid and provided with copies of all papers they signed.

We propose paying participants $40, which is our standard payment. In total, for this project, the maximum respondent burden will be 30 hours of interviewing in addition to travel time. An updated burden table for this project is shown below:

Projects	Number of Participants	Number of Responses/ Participant	Average hours per response	Response burden
QDRL Interviews
2) Other questionnaire testing	30	1	1	30

Attachments (2)

cc:

M. Moien

M. Daneshvar

S. Perryman

2