Response to passback questions from OMB

Memorandum United States Department of Education

Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Statistics

DATE: February 21, 2017

TO: Robert Sivinski and E. Ann Carson, OMB

THROUGH: Kashka Kubzdela, OMB Liaison, NCES

FROM: Mary Coleman, NCES

SUBJECT: International Early Learning Study (IELS 2018) Cognitive Items Trial – Responses to OMB Passback (OMB# 1850-0803 v.190)

Below please find NCES responses to OMB passback received on February 17, 2017.

1. The justification stresses the need to recruit a wide range of incomes, races, adult education, and urban/suburban areas. However, I don’t see any sort of sample size estimates for these groups:

a. The parental screener says “Attempt to recruit a mix” for several questions, which suggests that getting a diverse sample is up to the AIR recruiters? Does ED at least give them targets for different groups? I’m pretty uncomfortable with leaving the sample selection up to recruiters who “attempt” to get a diverse sample.

NCES Response: We have given AIR more specific recruitment goals. Specific targets for each group have been added to the script (appendix A, starting on p. 9).

b. What happens if, in the first 30 families that they call, the recruiters end up with 30 non-Hispanic white 5-year olds, or 30 families making over $125,000..…can they say they “attempted” but didn’t get any other racial or income diversity?

NCES Response: We are confident that this will not happen because the existing participant database contains this demographic information. Families will be called based on our recruitment goals. The screener is used to confirm that the demographic information is correct.

c. Related: Do the recruiters go through the whole list of 400 families and then decide based on the responses who to call back in for the actual assessment – because if so, the language in the screener doesn’t indicate that. Instead, if you make it through #16, you’re told what day and time to show up for the assessment.

NCES Response: Families will be called according to their demographic characteristics and the sample targets. As participants are recruited, the lists will be revisited to see if more potential respondents for a particular group need to be called. Adjustments will be made accordingly. We estimate calling up to 400 people to recruit the needed number of participants. Calls will stop once recruitment goals have been reached.

2. Screener question 13 – is this income before or after taxes? I’d suggest putting that designation in the question.

NCES Response: We have specified that we are asking about income before taxes.

3. Screener question 9 – What happens if someone answers “Rural”? Do they get terminated from the study?

NCES Response: No, they will still be invited to participate and we have expanded the recruitment goals to include this group.

4. Screener questions 10/11 – Again, what happens to people who answer “Prefer not to answer” or “Other”

NCES Response: They will be selected to participate if they have most of the other characteristics we are seeking about.