Revisions Memo

MEMORANDUM OMB # 1850-0803 v. 212

DATE: October 2, 2017

TO: Robert Sivinski, Office of Management and Budget

THROUGH: Kashka Kubzdela, National Center for Education Statistics

FROM: Sarah Grady, National Center for Education Statistics

SUBJECT: National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) 2019 Types of Schooling Cognitive Interviews - Revised [Revision to a previously approved package (1850-0803 v.200)]

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection program of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) aimed at providing descriptive data on the educational activities of the U.S. population, with an emphasis on topics that are appropriate for household surveys rather than institutional surveys. Given a changing K-12 education landscape, and to improve NHES data quality, NCES is developing for 2019 a single Parent and Family Involvement in Education (NHES:PFI) questionnaire for all types of school-age children that, among other utilities, will identify whether a given child is a homeschooled student, virtual education student, enrolled student, or combination thereof. The request to conduct cognitive interviews to assess the extent to which draft NHES:PFI survey items for 2019 capture respondents’ perceptions regarding homeschooling, virtual schooling, and school choice phenomena, and to evaluate respondents’ ability to navigate the PFI questionnaire appropriately was approved in June 2017 (OMB #1850-0803 v. 200). The key points of interest for this study are: (a) respondents’ experiences with a combined PFI that includes questions for both families that homeschool and those that enroll their children in public or private schools and (b) performance of any new items that have not been part of PFI data collection in prior administrations, particularly new items related to virtual education, homeschooling, and school choice. Due to challenges encountered in recruiting participants, this request is to leverage local schools in recruiting parent participants and to increase the incentive amount offered to prospective participants.

This request does not increase respondent burden or the cost to the federal government.

This study was scheduled to conclude in September 2017, but we have encountered serious difficulties recruiting participants for this study. To date, recruitment ads have been placed on listservs and sent to relevant organizations, but we have completed only 5 interviews and scheduled 6 more interviews, out of the 85 needed interviews. This request is to expand the methods for recruitment and to increase the offered incentive amount from the approved $40 t0 $50.

To reflect the desired changes, we made the following revisions to the approved clearance documents:

On page 4 of Volume 1, in the Recruiting and Paying Respondents section, the sentence: “All recruitment materials (e-mail, social media, and brochures) are included in Attachment 1.” was replaced with: “Additionally, we will identify DC metropolitan area schools and school districts in which online course taking occurs but, because of the short timeline of this study, for which their respective districts do not require lengthy approval processes. We will then request permission from the districts of the desired schools to contact the schools directly, and will then ask the schools to distribute a study recruitment flier to students to take home to their parents. Separately, we will also contact parent teacher associations (PTAs) and parent teacher organizations (PTOs) for local schools and asked them to distribute the flier to their membership. All recruitment materials (e-mail, social media, letters, and flyers) are included in Attachment 1.”

In the same section, $40 was changed to $50, and the phrase “difficult to recruit” was added in the following sentence: “To assure that we are able to recruit the difficult to recruit, select types of participants who are representative of homeschooling, virtual schooling, and school choice, who are like the parents that will take part in the 2019 NHES, and to thank them for their time and for completing the interview, during recruitment each parent will be offered a $50 incentive for participation.”

On page 5 of Volume 1, in the Project Schedule section, “September” was changed to “October” in the sentence: “The interviews are expected to be completed by October 2017.”

In Attachment 1 and Attachment 2, throughout, we revised the incentive amount from $40 to $50.

Per the revision to Volume 1 detailed above, in Attachment 1, we also added a Letter to School Districts (p.8), a Letter to Schools (p.9), and a Letter to Parent Teacher Associations (p.10).

No edits were made to Attachment 3.

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