The Census Bureau plans to conduct additional research under the generic clearance for questionnaire research (OMB clearance number 0607-0725). We plan to conduct cognitive interviews to test new questions that allow assessment of provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that are scheduled for implementation in 2014.
In 2006, Massachusetts passed similar legislation at the state level. We would like to conduct qualitative work in Massachusetts to explore how to ask people (in English and Spanish) about whether their health insurance premium is subsidized. Subsidization is a variable feature of the “Exchange” which, under the ACA, will introduce novel ways of obtaining health coverage.
The Census Bureau is currently conducting research related to this topic under a letter submitted for OMB clearance on February 13, 2012. That research is focused on the Current Population Survey (CPS). This new submission is focused on the American Community Survey (ACS).
Between August and November, 2012, a contractor (the same contractor who conducted the CPS research) will be conducting a maximum of 60 cognitive interviews. The respondents will have a range of demographic characteristics, including varied household income and composition, marital status, and race. The most important characteristic is that the respondents be enrolled in health care “exchanges.” For the previous research, a mailing to known Exchange enrollees was conducted by the “Connector” (the administrative arm of the Exchange in Massachusetts) and those interested in participating in an interview were asked to call in to the research center. The response was quite positive and there remain a sufficient number of interested Exchange enrollees to conduct the ACS interviews. No additional burden hours are involved to recruit these respondents.
A small number of non-exchange enrollees (those with employer-sponsored insurance and Medicaid) will also be recruited using flyers (in both Spanish and English; see Enclosure 1) posted at medical clinics and (if possible) emergency rooms serving rural and lower income clients as well as facilities that provide ESL training. Newspapers, Craigslist.com, MassLive.com and other online sites will also be used. Those interested will be invited to call and a telephone screener (see Enclosure 2) will be conducted to determine eligibility for the study. The burden estimate for these interviews is 25 calls at an average of seven minutes per screening call, for a total of about3 burden hours.
The contractor will test two versions of the ACS questions in two different modes: mail and Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing/Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CATI/CAPI). The mail version of the interview will be self-administered by the respondent and the CATI/CAPI version of the interview will be read to the respondent by the interviewer. The respondent will be asked a subset of the 2013 ACS questions plus the proposed insurance question. For households consisting of more than just the respondent, a smaller subset of the ACS questions will be asked of person 2 and, if applicable, person 3. Copies of the 4 questionnaire versions and a draft protocol are attached (See Enclosures 3-7).
Respondents will be informed that the survey is being conducted under the authority of Title 13, that their involvement is voluntary and that the information they provide is confidential and will be seen only by employees involved in the research project. Participants will be asked to sign a consent form (see Enclosure 8). They will be paid $40 for participating in the study.
The estimated time for completion of the interview is one hour; hence burden for the cognitive interviews is 60 hours. In total, we estimate 63 burden hours for both conventional screening and cognitive interviews.
The contact person for questions regarding data collection and study design is listed below:
Joanne Pascale
Research Social Science Research Analyst
Center for Survey Measurement
U.S. Census Bureau
4600 Silver Hill Road
Washington, D.C. 20233
301-763-4920
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | pasca001 |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-02-02 |