Developmental Project Report-Incentives

Attachment 4

Developmental Project Report

Incentive Pilot

Incentive Pilot

Between January and October 2019, NHANES conducted a pilot study of offering respondent incentives for the screening and sampled person (SP) interview components. The purpose of this pilot was to assess what impact, if any, different incentive levels have on response, effort, and data quality. The results of this project would be used to help determine if it would be helpful to add an incentive to the NHANES screening and SP interview process.

For the screener, the incentive levels being compared were $0 (control), $2 and $5. For the SP interview, the incentive levels being compared were $0 (control), $20 and $40. This pilot was conducted in ten NHANES locations across seven states. This was the first time that an incentive at the screening and SP interviews were tested in NHANES. Historically, NHANES has only used incentives for participants completing the exam at the Mobile Examination Center (MEC).

During the screener portion of the pilot some benefit was observed for the $2 prepaid incentive. However, this benefit was not large enough to support using any incentive at the screening interview of NHANES. Regarding the SP interview, both the $20 and $40 SP interview incentives positively increased response and both reduced contacts per completed SP interview. Conditional SP Interview response was shown to increase significantly with both the $20 and $40 incentive among women, children ages 11 and younger, African Americans and Hispanics.

As a result of these findings, the program is implementing an SP incentive of $25, (conditional on SPs completing the SP interview) in the NHANES main study starting in 2021. The amount is commensurate with the other changes being implemented this survey cycle.