Appendix N.1 NASS Comments on OMB Package

Appendix N.1
NASS Comments on OMB Package

WIC Participant and Program Characteristics Study

OMB control number 0584-0609

Reviewer:

Josephine Akato, Mathematical Statistician

Summary, Estimation, and Disclosure Methodology Branch

National Agricultural Statistics Service

United States Department of Agriculture

General Comments:

This proposal described well the reason why this research should be conducted and its impact on budget, civil right reporting, research and WIC policies and procedures. Data collection procedure is well thought out and designed, especially with the sampling plan for WIC SAs that are unable to provide a census for their participants to achieve the goals of the study.

Part A.

More details on agreed upon data elements (Page 1-2) if described in Part A will be helpful. It will be great to explain the need for data elements expansion in 2020 and 2022 studies.

In section A16, perhaps include more details on data cleaning along with the expected ranges for each variable and how outliers that fall far outside the expected range are handled.

Part B.

Data collection every two years will not be a big burden on the WIC SAs and the sampling plan as an alternate means of data collection for WIC SAs that are unable to provide a census of participants is statistically valid.

It is good that there is a statistical procedure in place for data collection for a WIC SA unable to provide a census of participants. It is anticipated that data on 100 percent of WIC participants from each WIC SA will be received, was this the case for previous studies? Has the alternative sampling strategy ever been used in previous studies?

Even if you receive a 100% response rate on this survey, is it possible to have missing items for some records? How will missing data be handled?