NonSub Change Memo - MIHOPE-LT Semi-structured Inteverview Update

To: Josh Brammer, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

From: Nancy Geyelin Margie and Laura Nerenberg, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE), Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Date: February 26, 2019

Subject: Non-substantive change request - MIHOPE-K follow-up data collection (0970-0402)

As described in the Supporting Statements A and B for the MIHOPE-K follow-up data collection (0970-0402; approved 11/28/2018), the study plans to conduct semi-structured interviews with a subset of MIHOPE families. In this memo, we provide additional information about the semi-structured interviews that was not originally included in Supporting Statements A and B. The plans described here do not involve change the original burden estimates; the time to complete the semi-structured interview and the number of respondents remains the same.

The MIHOPE long-term follow-up provides an opportunity for the field of home visiting to learn more about families’ experiences with evidence-based home visiting programs and other service providers, as well as their broader circumstances navigating parenthood with young children. Such experiences and perceptions are challenging to assess through the use of surveys or administrative records alone. Therefore, as described in Supporting Statements A and B, a semi-structured interview will provide important insights into families’ circumstances that would not otherwise be captured through data collection efforts of the project. The following information is provided in Supporting Statements A and B or as separate attachments.

• The final interview protocol, which we indicated we submit when it was finalized (Attachment 3)

• A clarification about our sampling plan

• A proposed incentive, which was inadvertently omitted from the initial submission

• Contact materials specific to this effort (Attachment 15)

• Consent script (Attachment 16)

• Research statement (Attachment 17)

Sampling Plan: Program Group and Age of Children

Rather than interviewing both program and control group families, we have decided to focus the semi-structured interviews on understanding the experiences of program group families only, to explore variation in patterns of engagement with home visiting services. The estimated number of respondents will not change but they will now only be program group families.

Because we will be gathering retrospective accounts of families when they were first eligible and interested in potentially receiving home visiting services and having them trace their experiences over time as parents of newborns and young children, we plan to conduct interviews with families whose children are at the younger end of the MIHOPE sample rather than waiting until children are in kindergarten (as previously proposed). Currently, these children are approximately 3½ years old.

Due to the change in focal age, separate contact materials from those previously approved will be sent to recruit families for these interviews. Specifically, the semi-structured interview notification plan will include an interview outreach letter, email, text messages, and follow-up phone calls (Attachment 15). Prior to beginning administration of the semi-structured interview, we will obtain consent for participation (Attachment 16) and will provide a Research Statement (Attachment 17). The consent script and research statement will be used in tandem at the beginning of the in-person interview to ensure that respondents understand the research activities in which they are participating.

We have made revisions to the Supporting Statements sections A2, A3, A12, A16, B2 and B3 to reflect these updates. We have made a revision to Supporting Statement section A12 to correct an error to the currently approved package.

Incentive

We inadvertently omitted a proposed incentive for the semi-structured interviews from the Supporting Statements but feel that it is a necessary component to include. We propose offering a $50 incentive for participation in the semi-structured interviews, which is consistent with the $50 incentive that OMB approved for the MIHOPE-K in-home visit. The burden estimates for both activities is similar. Additionally, this is consistent with the incentives that OMB has approved for other focus groups and interviews with a similar burden estimate. For example, participants were given $50 for 90-minute focus groups as part of the Evaluation of SNAP Employment and Training Pilots (OMB control number 0584-0604).

We have updated Supporting Statements sections A9 and B3 to reflect this update.

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