NHIS Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement - 10 day letter

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 12, 2011

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) (OMB No. 0920-0222, exp. 03/31/2013) plans to conduct research to evaluate questions from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement.

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: 2012 NHIS Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement

The NHIS is administered by the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes for Health has contracted with NHIS to field a full supplement on the United States population’s use of complementary and alternative medicine and vitamins and herbal supplements. This will be a follow up to the 2007 NHIS Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement.

The questionnaire that we are testing appears in Attachment 1. The questionnaire focuses on different complementary and alternative health practices that respondents may have tried, as well as their reasons for using these practices. The intent of the QDRL project is to test these questions prior to their fielding in the actual survey.

We propose to recruit up to 30 adults who themselves use Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) or who have children who use or have used CAM. The sponsors are particularly interested in testing questions from the Child version of the CAM supplement and therefore we hope to recruit at least half of our sample from this population. In addition to this particular group, sponsors are also interested in recruiting 4-5 Latinos who use or have used CAM or who have children who use or have used CAM. Absolutely no children under the age of 18 years will be interviewed.

We plan to recruit respondents through a combination of a newspaper advertisement and flyers. The newspaper advertisement/flyer is shown in Attachment 2.

Cognitive Interviews will be conducted by QDRL staff members in the QDRL with an individual respondent 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.

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) NCHS Surveys	30	1	1	30

Attachments (2)

cc:

M. Moien

C. Walker

S. Perryman

2