0990-0372- Non-Substantive Change to ICR Reference No

M E M O R A N D U M

TO: Margo Schwab

Josh Brammer

FROM: Matthew Swain, ONC’s Office of Econmic Analysis, Evaluation, and Modeling

DATE: April 27, 2011

RE: Non-Substantive Change to Evaluation of the IT Professionals in Health Care ("Workforce") Program: ICR Reference No: 201012-0990-002

This Memorandum is to request a non-substantive change to the Evaluation of the IT Professionals in Health Care Program; specifically, to the Supporting Statement, Section A.9: Explanation of any Payment or Gift to Respondents. The requested change is to add a second incentive option for survey respondents to the community college student baseline and follow-up surveys in the form of two gift certificates to Amazon.com for the amount of $25 each in order to facilitate an 80% response rate on each of the surveys.

Currently, the incentive offered to respondents upon completion of the student survey is a reduced membership to the professional organization, Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). This incentive is for completion of both the baseline and follow-up surveys. We have found during the first few weeks of data collection that this incentive is effective for graduates of the community college program; however, it has been less effective in enticing drop-outs of the program to complete the survey. As Table 1 demonstrates, the current response rate for the baseline survey among students who are either still enrolled or completed the program is much higher than compared to those who have dropped out of the program.

In addition, one of the goals of the survey is to understand why certain students choose to leave the program. It is currently hypothesized that one reason for students leaving the program is that they are no longer interested in the health information technology field. If this is a valid hypothesis, then a one year membership to a professional society in the health information technology field may be less effective as an incentive for completing the survey.

Table 1: Response Rate as of April 25, 2011

Enrollment Status	Completes (N)	Sample Size (N)	Response Rate (%)
Enrolled/Completed	260	528	49%
Drop Out	22	95	23%

Given the response rate differences between those students who are enrolled or completed their programs and those who have dropped out, we believe it would be more beneficial to offer the secondary incentive of an Amazon.com gift certificate to dropouts of the program. In addition, if we find other non-respondent groups who are less inclined towards the HIMSS membership, we also would offer the alternative incentive for survey completion. This change does not affect burden hours or total cost of the data collections activities for this evaluation, indicated in Section A.14. in the Supporting Statement.

If you have any questions or need further clarification, please contact Matthew Swain at [email protected].