Non-Substantive Change Request - July 2017

Request for Approval of a Non-Substantive Change:

NATIONAL SURVEY OF FAMILY GROWTH

OMB No. 0920-0314

Expires May 31, 2018

July 25, 2017

Contact Information:

Anjani Chandra, Ph.D., Health Scientist

Principal Investigator and Team Lead

National Survey of Family Growth Team

Division of Vital Statistics/Reproductive Statistics Branch

CDC/National Center for Health Statistics

3311 Toledo Road, Room 5414

Hyattsville, MD. 20782

301-458-4138 (office)

301-458-4034 (fax)

achandra@cdc.gov

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm

Request for Approval of a Non-Substantive Change:

NATIONAL SURVEY OF FAMILY GROWTH, 2017-2018

This request is for a nonsubstantive change to an approved data collection (OMB No. 0920-0314, expiring May 31, 2018), the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

On May 25, 2015, the NSFG was approved to collect data for the 3 years ending May 31, 2018. That request for this renewal stated that:

“We are seeking approval to:

• Conduct the NSFG for the next 3 years, 2015-2018;

• Expand the age range of the NSFG from 15-44 to 15-49(for fieldwork starting in September 2015) in order to address lower eligibility rates associated with the aging U.S. population and better capture data on major fertility and demographic transitions, reproductive health, and other core NSFG topics;

• Make revisions to the female and male questionnaires (for fieldwork starting in September 2015) to incorporate new and modified items related to contraceptive use, reproductive health, preventive service screening/counseling, sexual orientation, health insurance, cigarette smoking, cancer risk, military service and sheltered homelessness; and

• Add or modify a small number of questions in 2017 using a non-substantive change request. These questions would be similar to the questions and topics contained in the 2015 questionnaires.”

This request specifies those non-substantive questionnaire changes proposed for fieldwork beginning in September 2017. Burden for the NSFG data collection is still estimated to be within the approved averages of 60 minutes for males and 80 minutes for females.

In addition, per agreement in May 2015, we are providing OMB with information on our sexual orientation data collected in ACASI, based on the 50-50 randomized split of all respondents 15-49 to receive either the NSFG version of the question or the NHIS version of question.

This change request includes 6 attachments:

• Attachment 1 is a spreadsheet summarizing the questionnaire changes we propose for 2017, including brief rationale for each one and page numbers where you will see the specific items in the questionnaire attachments.

• Attachments 2 and 3 are the female and male questionnaires, respectively, in “CAPI-lite” format, which shows these questionnaire changes in context. CAPI stands for “computer assisted personal interviewing,” and the “lite” refers to the streamlined format of these questionnaires to show basic question wording and routing, but not all of the detailed programming instructions included in the “CAPI Reference Questionnaires” (CRQs).

• Attachments 4 and 5 are clean copies of the proposed female and male questionnaires with all of the modifications incorporated.

• Attachment 6 provides background information and preliminary results from the 50-50 comparison study of the NSFG and NHIS questions on sexual orientation asked within the NSFG ACASI since September 2015.

In light of our 05/31/18 expiration date, an extension package for OMB #0920-0314 will be submitted in the next few months to continue interviewing beyond May 2018 using the same questionnaire versions proposed within this submission.

1. Circumstances Making the Information Collection Necessary

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), under its duties specified in 42 U.S.C. 242k, Section 306(a and b)(1)(h) of the Public Health Service Act, conducts the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to collect and disseminate “statistics on family formation, growth, and dissolution.” The NSFG supplements and complements the data from birth certificates on factors (such as contraception, marriage and divorce, and infertility) that affect birth and pregnancy rates. In addition, the NSFG serves a variety of data needs in public health programs that sponsor and depend on it (listed below).

Six cycles of the NSFG were fielded periodically from 1973 to 2002--in 1973, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1995, and 2002. In the 1973 to 1995 surveys, the NSFG was based on national samples of women aged 15-44, and focused on factors affecting pregnancy and birth rates. In 2002, the NSFG began interviewing men age 15-44 as well as women, to obtain data on fatherhood involvement, behaviors related to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and other closely related topics. The “continuous” survey was fielded from June 2006 to June 2010. Interviewing ceased while a new contract was awarded and OMB approval for a change request could be approved, and began again in September 2011. This period of continuous interviewing, under the current contract, is expected to run through mid-2019. The first two public use files from this fieldwork period have been released:

• 2011-2013 files containing interview data from September 2011 through September 2013 were released in December 2014; and

• 2013-2015 files containing interview data from September 2013 through September 2015 were released in October 2016.

At roughly the same point in 2018, NCHS will release another set of 2-year public use files spanning interviews from September 2015 through September 2017, with 1 more such file release to cover the remainder of interviews conducted under the current NSFG contract (Sept 2017 through mid 2019).

2. Purpose and Use of Information Collection

The purpose of the NSFG and the uses of the data by NCHS and other funding partners (all within DHHS) remain the same as previously described in our 2015-2018 renewal package.

Since the renewal in May 2015, NSFG has gained 2 additional funding partners within CDC:

• Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) – Within CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP), NSFG has long been supported by the Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP) and Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention (DSTDP). Since 2016, NCHHSTP/DASH has begun cosponsoring the NSFG to support the collection of data on sexual activity, contraception, and sexual/reproductive health of young people. DASH is particularly interested in improving data collection on sex education to gain a better understanding of the formal instruction that may occur within school settings.

• Division of Nutrition Monitoring, Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO) – Within CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP), NSFG has long been supported by the Divisions of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC) and Reproductive Health (DRH). Since 2016, NCCDPHP/DNPAO has begun cosponsoring the NSFG to support the overall data collection on fertility and infant feeding practices including breastfeeding. DNPAO’s support has also bolstered data collection on nutrition-related counseling that mothers of young children receive from health care providers and other sources.

11. Justifications for Sensitive Questions

The NSFG focuses on factors related to pregnancy, family formation, and sexual/reproductive health, topics which are almost by definition sensitive and personal for some people. However, decades of NSFG field experience has shown that this is not generally a serious problem, as most respondents accept and answer the questions within this context of understanding these demographic and public health concerns on a population level. None of the proposed modifications captured within this submission are considered sensitive.

12. Estimates of Annualized Burden Hours and Costs

The net effect of the proposed questionnaire changes for 2017 will not impact the currently approved burden times and costs.

12.A Estimated Annualized Respondent Table

Respondents	Form	No. of Responses	Responses per Respondent	Average Burden/ Response (in hours)	Total Burden Hours
Household Individual	Screener Interview	15,000	1	3/60	750
Household Female 15-49	Female Interview	2,750	1	90/60	4,125
Household Male 15-49	Male Interview	2,350	1	60/60	2,350
Household Individual	Screener Verification	1,500	1	2/60	50
Household Individual	Main Verification	510	1	5/60	43
TOTAL	---	22,110	---	---	7,318

The average response burden cost for the NSFG is estimated to $179,291 (Wage information is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm).

12.B Estimated Annualized Respondent Costs

Total Burden Hours	Respondent Wage Rate per Hour	Total Respondent Costs
7,318	$24.50	$179,291

15. Explanation for Program Changes or Adjustments

Currently, the NSFG data collection is approved for 7,318 burden hours overall. The proposed questionnaire changes captured in this package neither alter that overall annualized estimate nor the estimated burden for each of the individual data collection instruments.

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