Attachment F_followup survey_new

ATTACHMENT F:

overview of the 12-month follow-up survey

Child support noncustodial parent employment demonstration (CSPED)

Overview of the 12-Month Follow-Up Survey of Study Participants

We plan to interview each study participant twice. The first (baseline) interview will occur immediately before randomization. This instrument is included in the current OMB submission (Instrument #7). The second (follow-up) interview will be conducted approximately 12 months after random assignment. This instrument has not yet been developed. We will seek clearance for this instrument in a future submission. We anticipate that the follow-up instrument will take respondents an average of 45 minutes to complete and that it will be completed by 80 percent of the 12,000 sample members who complete the baseline interview, for a total of 9,600 respondents.

CSPED interventions aim to improve child support, employment, and parenting outcomes. The follow-up survey is intended to capture these key outcomes. As such, the follow-up instrument will include nine topical sections: (1) Biological Child Roster, (2) Father Contact with Biological Children; (3) Relationships with Mothers/Partners; (4) Presence of Non-biological, Resident Children, (5) Economic Support for Biological Children, (6) Attitudes about Child Support and the Child Support System, (7) Economic Stability and Self-Sufficiency, (8) Father Well-Being, and (9) Parenting of Focal Child(ren). Information on the specific types of data to be collected with regard to each topic is presented in the table below. Here, we briefly describe the purpose of each section and its relevance to the evaluation. Table F.1 provides additional information on the sections of the 12-month follow-up survey of participants.

The Biological Child Roster will only gather information on children born after the baseline interview. This information is necessary to understand whether and how fathers’ family situations may have changed since study enrollment. It is possible both that CSPED program participation may influence subsequent partnering and fertility decisions and also that such decisions will influence the respondents’ program outcomes (with regard to child support compliance, employment, and parenting/involvement with children).

Father Contact with Biological Children represents a primary outcome of the CSPED intervention, which explicitly aims to improve parenting behaviors. As in the baseline survey, the follow-up instrument will track the numbers and types of contact fathers have had with children in the prior 30 days, as well as their perception of the quality of their overall relationship with each child.

The Relationships with Mothers/Partners section will serve two purposes. First, it will gather data on fathers’ relationships that began or ended after the baseline data were collected. Second, it will allow us to track whether (and how) the CSPED interventions may have influenced father relationships with all of the mothers’ of their children. These relationships may be influenced by program participation and they may influence program related-outcomes, such as father/child contact.

In the Presence of Non-biological, Resident Children section, we will update the fathers’ status with regard to living with such children. We will particularly focus on co-residence with a current partner’s children. Again, this information will provide insight into how fathers’ family situations may have changed between the baseline and follow-up interviews, which may both be influenced by program participation and influence program-related outcomes.

Economic Support for Biological Children is a primary outcome of the study. This section will collect father-reported data on provision of formal child support, informal child support, and in-kind contributions. In order to reduce respondent burden, we will ask these questions on a per mother/per sibling group basis, as we did in the baseline survey. In addition, although we will have access to administrative data on formal child support orders and payments we believe it is important to also collect this information directly from the noncustodial parents (NCPs) for two reasons. First, asking about formal child support provides a good platform for moving into informal support and in-kind support as this strategy helps the respondent separate formal contributions from these other types of support. That is, without being explicitly and separately asking about formal contributions, respondents may combine their formal and informal payment amounts when estimating informal payments. Second, we believe it is important to understand not only what the actual child support order and NCP’s level of compliance are, but also what the NCP thinks they are. Indeed, it is possible that some NCPs are not fully aware of their order and level of compliance; the intervention should function to improve such awareness of compliance.

Attitudes about Child Support and the Child Support System represent a key mechanism through which the CSPED interventions are likely to encourage greater child support payments: by changing the orientation of the system with the intention of making it more “user friendly” and ultimately perceived in a better light by NCPs.

The CSPED interventions’ focus on employment is intended to promote Economic Stability and Self-Sufficiency so that participants are better able to support their children. The data collected in this section are crucial for understanding whether and how the interventions influenced job-seeking behaviors, attitudes toward work, barriers to work, public program participation, formal and informal employment, housing quality and stability, and material hardship. In addition, we will collect data on (other) service receipt, which is crucial for understanding the types of programs to which control group members had access and whether these services were similar to those received by the treatment group. Furthermore, this information is useful for understanding whether treatment group members were induced to participate in additional services beyond the CSPED interventions.

The section on Parent Well-Being will be used to track whether CSPED improves NCPs’ mental and emotional health and reduces criminal behavior.

Finally, the Parenting of Focal Child(ren) section will collect data on the types and quality of fathering behaviors employed by respondents. This section is necessary to evaluate whether the parenting components of the CSPED interventions are associated with improved fathering behaviors. To limit respondent burden, rather than ask about each child, we will (randomly) select one to two focal children per father about whom to gather information on age-/developmentally-relevant parental activities.

Table F.1 Topics for CSPED Follow-Up Survey

Topic	Included in Baseline
Biological Child Roster
For each biological child born since the baseline survey. Name, date of birth or age, mother of child, marital and cohabitation status at time of birth, whether paternity and/or legal custody has been established, if ever lived with child. These items will only be asked about children born since the baseline survey.	Yes
Father Contact with Biological Children
Father contact. Nights father stayed with child past 30 days, days saw child in person, frequency of other types of contact with child, who else child stays with/is responsible for child’s care, overall relationship quality .	Yes
Relationships with Mothers/Partners
Relationship with each mother. Relationship status (marital and romantic involvement), any contact, co-residence (whether live together, nights stay in the same place), whether mother has new partner, relationship quality, co-parenting quality/whether good parenting team.	Yes
Current relationship with (non-mother) partner at baseline (if any). Relationship status, residential status, whether and when broke up; reasons relationship ended. These items will be asked if R reported a current partner who was not a mother of his children at baseline; however, if the partner has since become a mother, then these items will be skipped and the relationship with mother items (above) will be asked.	Yes
Relationship with new (since baseline) partner (if any). Relationship status, residential status. These items will be asked if R reports a current partner who was not a partner or mother at baseline and is not a mother at follow-up.	Yes
Presence of Non-biological, Resident Children
Number and relationship of nonbiological children. Number of nonbiological children under 18 living with father, number of these children who are the biological children of current partner.	Yes
Economic Support for Biological Children
Child support. Whether a child support order is in place, amount of order, amount paid in last month.	Yes
Other material support. Informal monetary support and in-kind support.	Yes
Attitudes about Child Support and the Child Support System
Attitudes about child support system (e.g., does the child support office help you meet your responsibilities?).	No
Attitudes about child support (e.g., Agree with: All noncustodial parents have a responsibility to pay something in child support, even if they have limited resources?).	No
Economic Stability and Self-Sufficiency
Job history since baseline (formal and informal employment). For past 12 months: job start date, end date, wage rate, hours worked, fringe benefits, formality of employment relationship.	Yes
Current (formal and informal) employment. Whether respondent has worked for pay in the past 30 days.	Yes
Current (formal and informal) earnings. Earnings from any work for pay in past month.	Yes
Barriers to work. Transportation, insufficient skills for labor market, caring for a family member, unstable housing, substance problems, self-control/anger problems, physical health, criminal record.	Yes
Job search behavior. Whether the respondent has sent out resumes, completed applications, answered employment advertisements, contacted employment agencies, or contacted friends or relatives about potential jobs.	No
Work ethic. Beliefs about centrality of work, importance of hard work.	No
Participation in assistance programs. Participation in SNAP, TANF, SSI, SSDI, Unemployment Insurance, and Medicaid in the past 30 days.	Yes
Service receipt. Participation in education or training, employment/work experience, marriage/relationship skills, parenting skills/education, child support services, financial management, mental health, case management, and legal programs or services.	No
Living situation. Housing type, tenure, and stability.	Yes
Material hardship. Housing instability, difficulty in paying bills, food insufficiency.	No
Father Well-Being
Mental health and emotional well-being. Depressive symptoms, parenting stress, mastery/self-efficacy.	Yes
Criminal behavior. Number of arrests and convictions, periods of incarceration, date of release, probation or parole. These items will only be asked about criminal justice events subsequent to the baseline survey.	Yes
Parenting of Focal Child(ren)
Sense of responsibility for child(ren). Fathers rank how important it is for them to: provide regular financial support to child, teach child about life, provide direct care to child, show love and affection to child, provide protection to child, serve as authority figure to child, discipline child.	No
Monitoring (e.g., knowing child’s friends/playmates, how child is doing in school/child care, talk to child about how things are going in school etc.).	No
Activities (child visits or sees father’s family, father and child eat meals together, father and child read or look at books or work on homework together, watch TV/videos together, spend time doing child’s favorite things).	No
Responsibility/management (taking child to appointments, school/child care; making decisions about what child is allowed to do; teaching child new things).	No
Warmth and supportiveness (encourage child to talk about feelings, feel close to child, give praise).	No
Discipline and harsh parenting (take away privileges, explain why something wrong, encourage child to do something else, yell/scream at, call names, spank).	No