Attachment U: Phone based Skills Assessment Pilot - Grantee Letter

S upporting Statement for OMB Clearance Request

Attachment U: Phone-based Skills Assessment Pilot Grantee Letter

National and Tribal Evaluation of the 2^nd Generation of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG)

0970-0462

April 2019

Submitted by:

Office of Planning,
Research & Evaluation

Administration for Children & Families

U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services

Federal Project Officers:

Nicole Constance, Hilary Bruck, and Amelia Popham

DATE

Dear [HPOG Grantee Contact Name]

Thank you for all of your work on the HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation to date. As you know, Abt
Associates—an independent research organization—is helping the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) National and Tribal Evaluations. At this time I am writing to request your help with a task related to the National Evaluation impact study.

We know from the HPOG data that some participants need to strengthen their literacy and numeracy skills before they move on to occupational training. Among the many things OPRE would like to assess as part of the HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation impact study are 1) whether HPOG 2.0 programs improve cognitive/academic skills for participants and 2) whether such improvements are related to key outcomes of interest, including educational attainment and employment. Please know that we are not looking at whether or not an individual participant’s skills improve. Rather, we will look at whether the treatment group has shown improvement relative to the control group.

The National Evaluation impact study team developed a short assessment to help address this research question. We would like to administer this assessment to about 300 HPOG 2.0 participants across several grantees. We will analyze the results of these 300 interviews to identify a small subset of the questions to incorporate into our second follow-up survey—which is currently under development.

We are asking for your help to identify about 20-25 participants from your program that might be willing to help us by completing this interview. These participants must have enrolled in your program either before March 1, 2017 or after May 1, 2018. Prospective participants should be nearly ready to start occupational classes or currently taking lower level occupational classes, such as certified nursing assistant (CNA) classes.

We estimate that the interview will take about 45 minutes to complete. All interviews will take place over the phone. Interviewers from Abt will call each participant at a time convenient for her/him. Participants who complete this interview will receive a $25 gift card.

You can use the attached flyer to help recruit participants to the study. Once you have identified the participants, please contact Debi McInnis at 617-349-2387. She will work with you to obtain the names, addresses, and phone numbers of interested participants in a safe and secure manner.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 618-349-2373.

Sincerely,

Gretchen Locke, Project Director

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