Memo - Nonsub Change - Adjustments to 6-month Employment and Parenting Follow-Up Surveys and Burden Assumptions

To: Steph Tatham

Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)

Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

From: Anna Solmeyer

Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE)

Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Date: February 1, 2017

Subject: Request for Non-Substantive Changes to Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) Evaluation – Adjustments to 6-month Employment and Parenting Follow-Up Surveys and Burden Assumptions

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S Department of Health and Human Services has funded the Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) evaluation. This memorandum requests approval for minor modifications to 1) the 6-month Employment Follow-up Survey, 2) the 6-month Parenting Follow-up Surveys, 3) burden assumptions, and 4) informed consent forms. The survey instruments were approved under OMB Control Number 0970-0485, with an expiration date of 09/30/2019.

B3 is a rigorous, multi-site evaluation that includes an implementation study and an impact study. B3 is partnering with six programs that serve low-income fathers to understand the effectiveness of strategies used to enhance fathers’ participation in fatherhood programs, to increase fathers’ stable employment and improve their economic circumstances, to encourage fathers’ consistent and positive engagement with their children, and to improve constructive cooperation with co-parents. The B3 impact study will use a randomized control design, which includes a baseline survey and a 6-month follow up survey, along with other data collection efforts including an in-program mobile device survey.

Updates to 6-month Employment Follow-up Survey

Minor changes to the employment follow-up survey were made as a result a formal pre-test of the instrument and experiences from the employment baseline survey. A summary of these changes are listed below; more details are available in the tracked changes version of the survey (11 - 6 Month Follow-up Employment Questionnaire Draft 1-13-17_track, and 11 - 6 Month Follow-up Employment Questionnaire Draft 1-13-17).

• Excluded many questions to keep the survey length to 40 minutes

• Moved questions to improve flow of some of the survey modules

• Added instructions for survey programmers (the survey will be administered using CATI)

• Clarified some questions that were not clear to respondents during the pre-test

• Fixed skip logic and renumbered questions

• Made minor wording changes to response categories to improve clarity or reduce the survey length

Updates to 6-month Parenting Follow-up Survey

Similarly, minor changes to the parenting follow-up survey were made as a result a formal pre-test of the baseline parenting instrument and drawing on the employment follow-up pre-test. A summary of these changes are listed below; more details are available in the tracked changes version of the survey (10 - 6 Month Follow-up Survey for Sites testing Parenting Intervention_01_13_17_track, and 10 - 6 Month Follow-up Survey for Sites testing Parenting Intervention_01_13_17).

• Excluded many questions to keep the survey length to 40 minutes

• Moved questions to improve flow of some of the survey modules

• Added instructions for survey programmers (the survey will be administered using CATI)

• Clarified some questions that were not clear to respondents during the pre-test

• Fixed skip logic and renumbered questions

• Made minor wording changes to response categories to improve clarity or reduce the survey length

• Changed questions about being a father figure to partner’s child with more specific questions about being a father figure to the focal child.

Addition of Passive Data Collection Using Video Recordings in One or Two Parenting Sites

In one or two parenting sites, we plan to video record regularly-scheduled parenting workshop sessions with 150 father-child pairs. We have amended Supporting Statements A and B to incorporate this additional data source. In particular, we have:

• Added Attachment 21 that is the informed consent form for father to be video recorded

• Added Attachment 22 that is the informed consent for child to be video recorded

• Added the video recordings to section A2. Data Collection timeline

• Amended section A10. Privacy of respondents – to include the new informed consent processes and data security measures for video recordings

• Amended section A16 to describe the analysis plans for the video recordings

• Added the video consent process to B2. Procedures for Collection of Information

Changes in burden assumptions

We have made 3 minor modifications to the study that have slightly reduced the overall annual burden hours:

• Decrease in the number of staff members who participate in the staff semi-structured interviews (row 12 & 13, Table A.4): Originally, we assumed that 240 staff members would participate in semi-structured interviews. Our revised assumption is that 228 staff will participate. This reduces annual burden hours from 240 to 228 hours in row 12 & 13 of Table A.4 Burden Estimates.

• Update burden for consent related to video recording father-child pairs. As indicated above, we plan to video record regularly-scheduled parenting workshop sessions with 150 father-child pairs. This requires two new consent forms – one to be completed by the father in the study, and one to be completed by a custodial parent for the child. We anticipate that some fathers in the study will be a custodial parent to the child (and therefore can give consent for the child’s participation), and others will not be a custodial parent to the child (and therefore, would require obtaining consent from a custodial co-parent). We do not know the exact breakdown of how many families will fall into these two categories, so to be thorough we are requesting approval for burden for 150 fathers and 150 custodial co-parents to provide consent for the child.

  • Update assumptions in calculating burden (see Appendix E). We originally estimated 10 minutes of burden to consent 1579 fathers into the parenting study across three sites, but we are finding that the consent process takes less time. For 150 fathers, we have added a second consent form to ask father's consent to have their father/child parenting workshops video recorded. For the fathers who are custodial parents to the focal child, we also add a third consent form to ask consent for their child to be video recorded during parenting workshops. Because the original consent process takes less than 10 minutes, we were able to add these two new consent processes for a subset of fathers without increasing our burden estimate.

  • Add co-parent consent for children to be video-recorded: In instances where the participating father is not a custodial parent, we will seek consent for the child from the custodial co-parent. We estimate that up to 150 co-parents will spend 5 minutes engaging in the informed consent process for their child to be video-recorded over the course of the study, adding a total of 4 annual burden hours. We also estimate that 12 staff members will spend 65 minutes each consenting 13 co-parents each over the course of the study, adding a total of 4 annual burden hours. (Note – we will not seek consent from the co-parents when the participating father is a custodial parent.) This is shown in Table A.4 under Attachment 21.

These three changes have been reflected in Table A.4 Burden Estimates in Supporting Statement A, and Appendix E - Assumptions of Calculation of Burden Estimates in Table A.4. Taken together, the proposed changes result in a slight reduction in overall burden, 4 fewer annual burden hours, as noted in Table A.4.

Slight Modification to Informed Consent Form

• In the parenting sites in the study, we removed references to obtaining criminal justice administrative records from the informed consent and assent forms (Appendix A - Consent Materials for Fathers, and Appendix B – Assent Materials for Fathers under 18), because we will only be obtaining these criminal justice records in employment sites.