Improving School Meal Program Accuracy through Pre-ordering and Grab and Go Systems - SLT

Appendix D.2 – State Follow-up Script

Form 1

Phone Script [will not be mailed]

<<Name>>, <<Title>>

<<State >>

First, we’d like to thank you for agreeing to have your SFAs and Schools participate in this study.

We wanted to set up a quick phone call with you now that <<School>> or <<SFA>> have agreed to participate in our research study. As you may recall, <<Schools>> [or] <<SFAs >> were chosen to be part of this study because they are using a pre-ordering app that allows students to pre-order school meals.

Just to refresh your memory on “Improving School Meal Program Accuracy through Pre-ordering and Grab and Go Systems” research study, FNS will test a series of changes in the ways that students select meals that are designed to increase the percent of trays that meet the requirements for reimbursement. Our research has shown that the vast majority of meal claiming error occurs when a meal that is not reimbursable is incorrectly identified as a complete meal (i.e., that it contains all the required components). By increasing the number of complete meals that students select, meal claiming error will necessarily go down. Our goal is to test design modifications to the [name] pre-ordering app that your school currently uses to determine whether students’ desire for convenience can be used to increase reimbursable meal percentages and reduce meal claiming error.

We want to reiterate that we will not be trying to measure any type of meal claiming error and we will not be collecting any personal information about your students. Our focus is on understanding whether using an app and/or some type of expedited serving line results in an increase in the number of reimbursable meals that are presented to the cashiers.

The primary purpose of this call is to let you know that <<SFA>> or <<School>> agreed to participate and provide you with an opportunity to ask any questions you may have about the study, so do you have any questions for us at this point?

[FNS will answer any questions the State has. If there are no questions, FNS will provide a couple of prompts to see if that generates any questions. Sample questions are provided below.]

Sample questions:

What data will be collected for the study?

Preliminary data will be collected to measure the percentage of reimbursable lunches that come to the cashiers before the intervention. We will not collect information on students, nor will we track whether the meal was paid, reduced-price, or free – these will simply be counts of reimbursable meals divided by the total number of meals served.

What is FNS going to do with the data?

FNS will produce a report that describes the study and our findings. With the permission of the State, SFA, and school, the report may include descriptive information about the schools or SFAs and the pre-ordering apps the schools use.

Form 2

Phone Script [will not be mailed]

<<Name>>, <<Title>>

<<State >>

First, we’d like to thank you for agreeing to let us speak with your SFAs and schools about participating in the “Improving School Meal Program Accuracy through Pre-ordering and Grab and Go Systems” study.

We spoke with <<SFA>> or <<school>> staff and after considering different options for study participation, the <<SFA>> or <<school>> explained that they would not be able to participate in the research study at this point.

This call is simply to let you know that FNS won’t be conducting this study in <<State>> and to thank you for your time and consideration.