Appendix H4: NASS Comments
Review of
WIC Nutrition Assessment and Tailoring Study (WIC-NATS)
Food and Nutrition Service (FNS)
Reviewer - Anthony Fischer – Mathematical Statistician
Methodology Division – Census Data Section
National Agricultural Statistics Service, Washington, DC 20250
Phone: (202) 720-0791
SSA – WIC NATS:
Page 5 – The abbreviation “SA” is used before it is clarified that it stands for State Agency. I recommend indicating earlier that SA means State Agency
Page 21 – Estimated Frequency of Responses per Respondent and Non-Respondent: This is not clear to me. Will respondents be continuously interviewed (i.e. 4.57 times) or will they be interviewed once? I am under the impression that respondents will be interviewed once. This question appears to be addressed in Appendix B, the OMB Burden Table, but I think that it is a good idea to mention that different instruments will require different frequencies of response. Clarify, for example, that although WIC participants will only be interviewed once, the frequency of responses per respondent number (4.57) also includes contacting SA and LA staff, reminder e-mails, informed consent, and other response burdens.
SSB – WIC NATS:
Page 5 – The document mentions that the study team will purposively select 10 SAs. Will there be a systematic process to determine which SAs will be contacted? There are several criteria given later in the Supporting Statement for how the SAs and LAs will be stratified, but will there be a selection process to determine which agencies will be sampled once it is determined which agencies meet the criteria?
Page 10 – Regarding the estimation procedure, what is the final product? A dataset or a publication? Is the brochure considered the publication? If there is a publication, it is not clear what will be published: most popular WIC services? Or will the results be used entirely internally at FNS?
Page 10 – The document mentions that the information collection procedure are described in Section A.2. Section A.2., however, describes the purpose and use of the information and gives a background of the types of operations that comprise the sample, but there is no mention of the estimation procedure, degree of accuracy, etc. I recommend adding a sentence to clarify that further information is included in section B.2.
Page 14 – The document mentions WIC clinics will be offered a gift in return for completing the survey. Will the clinics be made aware of the participation incentives during the recruitment process? Or only after they agree to participate?
Appendix A – Research Questions:
Page 4 – Objective 4d, what is clinic flow, and is there a way to measure that clinic flow has objectively improved? If yes, reference these methods or studies here.
Appendix C2
Page 2 – Question 3, the routing instruction in the ‘No’ answer option for Question 3 (GO TO QUESTION 4) seems unnecessary. Both yes and no answers will go to question 4 after question 3 unless instructed otherwise. Should ‘Yes’ answers go to another question? The routing can be verified against the web instrument routing (Appendix C2A)
Page 4 – Instructions prior to Question 8. Should this read ‘FOR EACH TRAINING TOPIC SELECTED IN QUESTION 7 ABOVE’? Question 6 is not about training topics.
Appendix C6
Page 5 – Regarding the previous point about clinic flow, the series of questions from 13-16 may be a good place to ask about metrics used to gauge clinic flow and how they can be improved. For example, the average time spent in the site per WIC participant, the average time spent visiting with a participant per staffer, etc.
Appendix C7
Page 5 – The last item on the page ‘Did the WIC CPA explain the participant’s growth/weight gain pattern to participant caregiver? chart)’ appears to need rewording or rephrasing. The reference to the chart is not clear
Appendix C9
Page 9 – Starting in Question 6, the routing must be corrected. If a respondent answers that the questionnaire was difficult, then they are routed to Question 8. As the questionnaire is currently routed, there are no circumstances where the respondent answers Question 7. Please thoroughly review and correct the routing numbers from Questions 6 through 14.
Appendix D3
Page 2 – Timeline of Activities, the first sentence should start ‘Data collection is expected to begin in…’
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Fischer, Anthony - NASS |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-13 |