NHES 2016 Change Memo

U NITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

National Center for Education Statistics

April 21, 2016

MEMORANDUM

To: Robert Sivinski, Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

From: Sarah Grady, Project Officer for the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES)

Through: Kashka Kubzdela, NCES

Re: National Household Education Survey 2016 (NHES:2016) Full-scale Data Collection Screener Nonrespondent Conversion Change Request (1850-0768 v13)

The 2016 National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) collection is currently in the field. Mailings for the first stage of the survey (the screener stage), in which we roster household members at sampled addresses have been completed. The screener response rate to date is 59 percent, which is lower than anticipated. The lower screener response rate decreases our potential response from the topical surveys (the Early Childhood Program Participation Survey, the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey, and the Adult Training and Education Survey). To attempt to raise the screener response rate, NHES plans to add a nonresponse telephone tree operation as soon as approval is obtained. A prerecorded telephone message will be delivered to households. Phone numbers will be obtained for these households by address-to-telephone matching, which will result in an estimated phone number match for 40.5 percent of addresses. The phone recording will say:

Hi, this is the U.S. Census Bureau calling. We mailed you a survey called the National Household Education Survey. Your response is vital to the success of the study, and we urge you to respond today. If you have misplaced your survey or have any questions, please call us at 1–888–840–8353. That number again is 1-888-840-8353. Thank you.

If we see lower than expected response rates at the topical level, we may choose to use a similar prerecorded telephone message for those households. Topical surveys are sent in rolling batches based on the date of screener receipt throughout the data collection period. For each batch, the automated phone call would occur at the time of the fourth and final mailing. The phone recording would say:

Hi, this is the U.S. Census Bureau calling. You have been selected to participate in a study about an adult in your household or about your child related to education. Recently, we sent a questionnaire to your address, but we have not received your response. Your response is vital to the success of the study. Please respond today. If you have any questions, please call us at 1-888-840-8353. That number again is 1-888-840-8353. Thank you.

To reflect these changes in procedures, the telephone script has been added to Appendix 1 NHES 2016 Communication Materials and the screener and topical procedures have been updated in Part B.

In addition, we plan to contact 9 or fewer respondents to the web version of the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Homeschooling survey. On the web, there are a higher proportion of breakoffs on this survey (17 percent) than on other NHES web surveys. We plan to debrief with 9 or fewer of these respondents to understand what led to the breakoff.

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