October, 2014
Anjani Chandra, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator and Team Lead
National Survey of Family Growth
National Center for Health Statistics
3311 Toledo Road
Hyattsville, MD 20782
Dear Anjani,
The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) is responsible for advising the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, in the HHS Administration for Children and Families (ACF), on increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of programs to improve the economic and social well-being of children and families. The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) is a rich source of detailed data on a range of topics that support the mission of ACF and its research arm, OPRE. As highlighted below, some of these topics include pregnancy prevention, fatherhood and healthy marriages, adoption, families participating in TANF and family strengthening.
Pregnancy Prevention
ACF and OPRE rely heavily on NSFG data to guide work on the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and Title V Abstinence Education program, both of which fund services to prevent sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy. Prevention science relies on nationally representative data to document trends in pregnancy, contraception, and sexually transmitted infections. Further, empirically-based prevention programs count on up-to-date information and trends regarding first sexual contact, types of sexual behavior, and attitudes towards outcomes such as having sex outside of marriage. Finally, understanding health disparities in STI risk and reproductive health provides a critical empirical foundation for pregnancy prevention initiatives. NSFG is a key data source for all of these domains.
ACF and OPRE are also using the NSFG to guide evaluation work in this area. For example, OPRE oversees an evaluation of the effectiveness of PREP, and the measures used in the PREP data collection instruments have borrowed from NSFG measures. When follow-up data are collected, it will be useful to compare PREP evaluation data to national data in order to further refine and guide pregnancy prevention efforts.
Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood
The NSFG also provides detailed national estimates concerning factors related to family planning, marriage, divorce, and parenthood. These data provide an important empirical base for ACF’s oversight of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grants. These programs aim to help fathers meet their parenting and financial responsibilities to their children as well as assist couples in building stronger relationships, and NSFG data on parenting and union formation and dissolution can inform our guidance to grantees. The NSFG will also help to inform a new evaluation of the effectiveness of these programs that OPRE is overseeing: similar to the PREP evaluation mentioned above, we plan to borrow from NSFG questionnaires in developing data collection instruments, and we will consider outcome data in light of NSFG data.
Adoption
The NSFG also provides data that can be useful for the Children's Bureau within ACF. The Children’s Bureau focuses on child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption, and promotes the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and youth. The NSFG provides important information on adoption and the demand to adopt by women. For example, the NSFG collects information about non-biological children who may have lived with respondents under their care and responsibility. Respondents are also asked about their current and previous pursuit of adoption, as well as about preferences for the characteristics of a child they would adopt (for example, age and race). This information is important for understanding adoption experiences in the United States, which informs our work in this area.
TANF
The NSFG also provides data that can be useful for the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) within ACF. One of OFA’s key responsibilities is to administer grant programs related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF programs aim to help families foster economically secure households and communities for the well-being and long-term success of children and families. Both single and two-parent households are eligible for TANF. The NSFG asks respondents about whether they have received assistance from programs, such TANF. This affords us the opportunity to understand both marriage rates and pregnancy/birth rates for individuals receiving TANF, for example. The NSFG is one of the few nationally representative samples that allows us to do this.
Family Strengthening
Much of OPRE’s work pertains to strengthening the family system as a whole, by improving parenting and child development in low-income families. The NSFG contains data that is directly relevant to this work. For example, home visiting related work is part of OPRE’s portfolio of research, which involves improving early childhood parenting in low-income families. Additionally, OPRE also conducts a large body of research related to Head Start, which also involves improving childhood development in low-income families. The NSFG provides data related to pregnancy rates and income levels, which would allow us to track trends in pregnancy/birth rates for low-income families.
Finally, several important features of NSFG enhance its utility. In addition to a rigorous probability sampling design and data collection methods which lead to high response rates, sensitive questions are collected using ACASI methods to maximize complete reporting of sensitive behaviors. The transition to continuous interviewing is not only more cost-efficient than in previous years, but it also allows for a stream of data that can be used on a more current basis.
We commend NCHS for providing rich data that facilitate the oversight and evaluation of many ACF programs which seek to improve the well-being of children and families. We look forward to continuing to learn from the NSFG data in the future. If there are any questions about OPRE’s needs for and uses of the NSFG data, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Seth Chamberlain
Senior Social Science Research Analyst
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Administration for Children and Families
Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
370 L'Enfant Promenade, SW
7th Floor West
Washington, DC 20447
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Department of Health and Human Services |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-25 |