Justification for January 2015 Change Request

OMB Control No. 3045-0174

Supporting Statement

AmeriCorps Opportunity Youth Evaluation Bundling Study

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Control No. 3045-0174

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) requests approval to make some changes to the AmeriCorps Opportunity Youth Evaluation Bundling Study. The Opportunity Youth Bundling will examine employment and education outcomes among youth age 16 to 24. Participating youth will be asked to complete the survey a total of three times over a two year period. The survey will be administered to opportunity youth AmeriCorps members and comparison group members at three points in time: first, when members enter the AmeriCorps program; second, when members exit the program; and finally, 6 months after program exit. The proposed changes are as follows:

• Remove the following items and questions:

  • Items a, b and c which ask respondents to create a code in order to link each respondent’s survey over time

  • Question 1 – Date of birth

  • Question 2 – Gender

  • Question 5a – Hispanic or Latino origin

  • Question 5b – Race

• Modify Question 6 to include State of residence

• Add the following questions:

  • Question 34 collects information on all respondents’ participation in education, community service and career training activities.

  • Question 35a identifies youth in the comparison group who may be AmeriCorps member.

  • Question 35 identifies whether youth (both treatment and comparison) in AmeriCorps have completed or are no longer participating in AmeriCorps.

  • Question 36 is a follow-up question for youth who dropout of AmeriCorps. This question collects information on the reason that these youth dropout of the program.

CNCS is seeking approval to administer the revised instrument for the first follow-up survey when youth exit the program and second follow-up survey which will be six months after the youth exit the program. The proposed deletions, additions, and modification have been carefully balanced, resulting in no change in the average time, per respondent, to administer the instrument.

Justification for the proposed changes

• It is not necessary to repeat Items a, b and c in the follow-up surveys. These three items (city or town of birth, number of letters in last name, and letters in mother’s name) are intended to create a code that will enable the three surveys to be linked. The contractor has set up a tracking procedure that will link the three surveys without repeating these three items. The response to Question 1 is not expected to change. Responses to Questions 2, 5a and 5b are not expected to change during the timeframe of the data collection.

• We propose to ask participants for their state of residence. During baseline data collection it became clear that several of the AmeriCorps programs recruit youth nationally not just in the state in which the program operates. The information on the participants’ state of residence will provide economic and demographic contextual data on the youth’s state of residence which might affect educational and employment outcomes following their AmeriCorps service.

• Three additional questions are added to collect information on all respondents’ participation in education, community service and career training activities during the course of the study; and collect information on the reasons that youth who participate in AmeriCorps dropout and do not complete their service with their AmeriCorps program. The data will provide contextual information about the youth’s employment and education outcomes.

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