Alternative Supporting Statement for Information Collections Designed for
Research, Public Health Surveillance, and Program Evaluation Purposes
Survey of Staff Recruitment, Training, and Professional Development in Early Head Start
OMB Information Collection Request
0970-0629
Supporting Statement
Part A
JANUARY 2024
Revised on MAY 2024
Submitted By:
Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
Administration for Children and Families
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
4th Floor, Mary E. Switzer Building
330 C Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 20201
Project Officers:
Jenessa Malin
Part A
Executive Summary
Type of Request: This Information Collection Request is for a new request. The research team is requesting 1 year of approval.
Description of Request: The research team is seeking approval for a one-time national survey of respondents from Early Head Start (EHS) grant recipients regarding practices to ensure that center-based infant and toddler teachers as well as home visitors have sufficient knowledge, training, experience, and competencies to fulfill the roles and duties of their positions. This study is intended to produce nationally representative estimates of EHS grant recipients’ teacher and home visitor recruitment, training, and professional development practices. The survey also aims to identify challenges and promising practices. The information collection is intended to inform the Office of Head Start in their efforts to support EHS grant recipients through program planning and training and technical assistance as well as to inform future research of relevance to the EHS workforce. The research team does not intend for this information to be used as the principal basis for public policy decisions.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeks approval to collect descriptive information related to Early Head Start (EHS) staff recruitment, training, and professional development practices.
EHS grant recipients need to search for, hire, and train teachers and home visitors to provide high-quality services to infants, toddlers, and their families. Specifically, EHS grant recipients must make sure that their teachers and home visitors meet or exceed the qualification and competency requirements described in the Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS)1. Previous research has highlighted ongoing staffing challenges and turnover faced by early care and education programs, including EHS programs. Yet, nationally representative information specific to EHS grant recipients is limited. Little is known about how EHS programs recruit and hire qualified and competent teachers and home visitors and how they support staff training and professional development.
This proposed information collection is a nationally representative survey that will describe how EHS programs ensure staff have the qualifications and competencies to deliver high-quality services to infants, toddlers, and their families. The information collection will examine how EHS grant recipients search for and hire qualified teaching and home visiting staff and support staff in their ongoing professional development and career advancement. The information collection also aims to identify promising strategies or approaches as well as challenges faced as EHS programs search for, hire, and train teaching and home visiting staff.
ACF has contracted with the Urban Institute and MEF Associates to complete this study. There are no legal or administrative requirements that necessitate this collection. ACF is undertaking the collection at the discretion of the agency.
Information gathered from this survey is intended to inform ACF’s understanding of the strategies EHS grant recipients use and the successes and challenges that they experience when searching for, hiring, and training teachers and home visitors who have the competencies and qualifications to provide high-quality services to infants, toddlers, and pregnant women. Findings are intended to inform ACF staff who support EHS program planning and operations, those who provide training and technical assistance to EHS grant recipients, EHS grant recipients, and researchers.
The information collected is meant to contribute to the body of knowledge on ACF programs. It is not intended to be used as the principal basis for a decision by a federal decision-maker, and is not expected to meet the threshold of influential or highly influential scientific information.
The information collection addresses four high-level research questions:
How do EHS grant recipients search for teachers and home visitors with the qualifications and competencies necessary to deliver high-quality services to infants, toddlers, and their families? What strategies or approaches have been most successful? What challenges do grant recipients face?
How do EHS grant recipients hire teachers and home visitors with the qualifications and competencies necessary to deliver high-quality services to infants, toddlers, and their families? What strategies or approaches have been most successful? What challenges do grant recipients face?
How do EHS grant recipients support existing teachers and home visitors in improving their qualifications and competencies? What strategies or approaches have been most successful? What challenges do grant recipients face?
How have any challenges searching for, hiring, and training teaching and home visiting staff impacted EHS program operations?
The research team proposes a statistically representative web-based survey of EHS grant recipients’ teacher and home visitor recruitment, training, and professional development strategies, challenges, and successes (see Supporting Statement B1 for more information). Prior data collection efforts on EHS grant recipients do not include in-depth information on workforce recruitment, hiring, and professional development practices. The research team plans to distribute a one-time survey to a representative, random sample of EHS program directors or their designee (see Table 1 below for more information on each survey instrument). The instrument will be aligned with the program option(s) offered by the EHS program. Center-based only grant recipients’ educational services are delivered in classrooms by teachers. Home-based only grant recipients’ services are delivered in families’ homes by home-visitors. Respondents from EHS programs that offer only center-based and/or family child care services will respond to a survey about searching for, hiring, and training teachers. Respondents from EHS programs that offer only home-based services will respond to a survey about searching for, hiring, and training home visitors. Respondents from EHS programs that offer both center-based and home-based services will receive an instrument that selects one type of staff (either teachers or home visitors) to report on. Limits to the generalizability of this study are to specific ACF regions, which are discussed in Supporting Statement B1. This limitation will be clearly stated in published results.
Table 1. Summary of instruments
Instruments |
Respondent, Content, Purpose of Collection |
Mode and Duration |
Instrument 1 Center-Based Only |
Respondents: EHS program administrator from EHS grant recipients that employ teachers. Content: Closed-ended questions about the strategies, successes, and challenges EHS programs use and experience when recruiting and providing professional development and training EHS teachers. Purpose: To gather nationally representative information on how EHS programs recruit and hire qualified and competent EHS teachers and how they support EHS teachers training and professional development. |
Mode: Online Duration: 30 minutes |
Instrument 2 Home-Based Only |
Respondents: EHS program administrator from EHS grant recipients that employ home visitors. Content: Closed-ended questions about the strategies, successes, and challenges EHS programs use and experience when recruiting and providing professional development and training EHS home visitors. Purpose: To gather nationally representative information on how EHS programs recruit and hire qualified and competent EHS home visitors and how they support EHS home visitors training and professional development. |
Mode: Online Duration: 30 minutes |
Instrument 3 Center-Based and Home-Based |
Respondents: EHS program administrator from EHS grant recipients that employ both teachers and home visitors Content: Closed-ended questions about the strategies, successes, and challenges EHS programs use and experience when recruiting and providing professional development and training EHS teachers or home visitors. Purpose: To gather nationally representative information on how EHS programs recruit and hire qualified and competent EHS teachers or home visitors and how they support EHS teachers or home visitors training and professional development. |
Mode: Online Duration: 30 minutes |
The research team intends to use the program contact information contained in the most recent and available Head Start Program Information Report (PIR) as the sampling frame (OMB #: 0970-0427). Supporting Statement B2 and B6 explain in detail how the team intends to use the PIR data in sampling, developing survey weights, and performing analyses. There is no burden to study participants associated with using PIR data for this information collection.
The research team plans to conduct data collection via web-based surveys. The web-based survey format allows respondents to complete the survey at their own pace and at any time. The research team plans to reduce respondent burden by leveraging the online survey platform’s tool that skips over questions that are not relevant to respondents based on prior responses.
The data captured by the survey do not duplicate other recent data collection efforts with this population. The research team modified some questions used in prior surveys and built new questions, statements, or response options based on information collected in the Study on the Conversion of Enrollment Slots from Head Start to Early Head Start (HS2EHS Study) (OMB #; 0970-0595. The research team adapted questions used in prior surveys so that they aligned with the research questions in the proposed study by revising question stems, adding and removing response options or statements, and revising response options. The research team designed the instrument to gather unique and needed in-depth data about how EHS grant recipients recruit and hire new teachers and home visitors and support existing teachers and home visitors in building qualifications and competencies through training and professional development. To reduce the time burden on respondents, the project team has taken every effort to reduce the length and complexity of the survey instrument. The research team has included a small number of items that overlap with the PIR, which the team plans to use to validate the survey data and develop sampling weights. The research team determined the benefits to including these items outweighed the minimal additional respondent burden.
Some of the EHS grant recipients included in the study will be small organizations, including community-based organizations and other nonprofits. We will minimize burden for respondents by restricting the length of surveys as much as possible and providing instruments in a web-based format, which will allow respondents to complete the surveys on their own time with breaks in between, if needed.
This is a one-time data collection.
In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations at 5 CFR Part 1320 (60 FR 44978, August 29, 1995), ACF published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the agency’s intention to request an OMB review of this information collection activity. This notice was published on November 30, 2023, Volume #88, Number #229, page # 83544-83545, and provided a sixty-day period for public comment. During the notice and comment period, no comments were received.
The project team consulted experts in the general design and focus of the study as well as in the development of the instruments. The research team engaged the experts listed in Table A along with Office of Head Start staff. These individuals provided guidance on effective data collection strategies, improvements to the survey to facilitate broader use of the data, and clarity of survey language and ways to minimize burden.
Table A. Experts and Stakeholders the Research Team Engaged
Name |
Affiliation |
Diane Horm |
Early Childhood Education Institute (ECEI) |
Stacy Ehrlich Lowe |
NORC |
Brie Broughman |
Pennsylvania Head Start Association |
Beth Cox |
Head Start Region VII |
Maryann Cornish |
Higher Horizons Head Start & Early Head Start |
Teresa Collins |
District 1199c Training & Upgrading Fund |
No token of appreciation will be provided.
As previously discussed, the team plans to identify EHS grant recipients, associated program administrators, and administrators’ contact information, from publicly available PIR data. The instruments primarily ask respondents to report on program-level practices, challenges, and successes. The instruments collect a very small amount of non-sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the survey including respondents’ professional role and years of experience. Respondents’ answers to these questions will not be linked to respondents’ names or contact information collected from the PIR. Information will not be maintained in a paper or electronic system from which data are actually or directly retrieved by an individuals’ personal identifier.
Information collected will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. Respondents will be informed of all planned uses of data, that their participation is voluntary, and that their information will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. As specified in the contract, the Contractor will comply with all Federal and Departmental regulations for private information.
Steps will be taken by the research team to maintain respondent privacy and individual team members will follow human subjects’ ethics protocols by keeping all information obtained as part of the data collection and analysis activities within the research team.
The research team will secure and maintain all data associated with the survey. The research team plans to use Qualtrics to field the survey. Qualtrics is a web-based data collection tool, which houses data on a secure server, utilizing an existing and continuously tested web-based infrastructure. The infrastructure features the use of HTTPS (secure socket, encrypted) data communication; authentication (login and password); firewalls; and multiple layers of servers, all implemented on a mixture of platforms and systems to minimize vulnerability to security breaches. Hosting on an HTTPS site ensures that data are transmitted using 128-bit encryption, so that transmissions intercepted by unauthorized users cannot be read as plain text.
As specified in the contract, the Contractor shall protect respondent privacy to the extent permitted by law and will comply with all Federal and Departmental regulations for private information. The Contractor has developed a Data Safety and Monitoring Plan that assesses all protections of respondents’ PII. The Contractor shall ensure that all of its employees, subcontractors (at all tiers), and employees of each subcontractor, who perform work under this contract/subcontract, are trained on data privacy issues and comply with the above requirements.
As specified in the evaluator’s contract, the Contractor shall use Federal Information Processing Standard compliant encryption (Security Requirements for Cryptographic Module, as amended) to protect all instances of sensitive information during storage and transmission. The Contractor shall securely generate and manage encryption keys to prevent unauthorized decryption of information, in accordance with the Federal Processing Standard. The Contractor shall: ensure that this standard is incorporated into the Contractor’s property management/control system; establish a procedure to account for all laptop computers, desktop computers, and other mobile devices and portable media that store or process sensitive information. Any data stored electronically will be secured in accordance with the most current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requirements and other applicable Federal and Departmental regulations. In addition, the Contractor must submit a plan for minimizing to the extent possible the inclusion of sensitive information on paper records and for the protection of any paper records, field notes, or other documents that contain sensitive or PII that ensures secure storage and limits on access.
The research team plans to download survey data to the Urban Institute’s confidential Y: drive securely through the Qualtrics website, and plans to conduct all analyses in a project-specific directory. The research team plans to make sure all responses are stripped of PII (e.g., Qualtrics automatically collects respondents’ IP addresses) as a first step before proceeding with the analysis. Once data are downloaded and secured to the Y drive, we will delete data from the Qualtrics server.
The contact list that comes from the PIR including, grant recipient names, program administrator names, program administrators’ roles, and their contact information, will be stored on Box. In some cases, the program administrator may provide contact information for another staff person who may be the survey respondent. The research team will keep this list of contact information on the Y drive.
Paper printouts of the data will be minimized. In remote work settings, any printouts of the data will be stored securely in locked storage in a researcher’s home office of work setting, out of the way of others who could potentially access them.
The research team has not proposed to collect sensitive information.
It is estimated that it will take respondents 30 minutes to complete the survey. The estimates include time for respondents to review instructions, search data sources, complete and review the responses, and transmit or disclose information. It is also estimated that it will take respondents a maximum of 5 minutes to respond to potential follow-up requests to complete or clarify answers to specific survey questions, such as those they may have missed or do not make sense given the respondent’s other survey answers. The research team aims to collect data from 600 respondents from EHS programs offering center-based and/or home-based options (see B2 for more information).
There are three possible instruments depending on the program option(s) offered by each grant recipient. The research team plans to assign respondents to the appropriate instrument (see Table 1).
The research team expects the total annualized cost to be $8,310.00. The research team based our cost estimate on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics occupation: Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare (Standard Occupational Code: 11-9031) 2022 hourly mean wage ($27.70). Total annualized cost was calculated as the product of annual burden hours and average hourly wage.
The team based the time estimate on the assumption that it will take respondents 1 minute to complete 3 survey questions, on average. In our pre-testing, the instruments took respondents 30 minutes, on average, to complete and Qualtrics estimates it will take respondents 20 minutes to complete the survey. The team also assumed that they would need to follow-up with approximately 30% of respondents to ask them to complete or clarify answers to specific survey questions. The team estimated it would take respondents no more than 5 minutes to complete these questions.
Instrument |
No. of Respondents (total over request period) |
No. of Responses per Respondent (total over request period) |
Avg. Burden per Response (in hours) |
Total/annual Burden (in hours) |
Average Hourly Wage Rate |
Total Annual Respondent Cost |
Instrument 1: Center-Based Only |
232 |
1 |
0.50 |
116 |
$27.70 |
$3,213.20 |
Instrument 2: Home-Based Only |
56 |
1 |
0.50 |
28 |
$27.70 |
$775.60 |
Instrument 3: Center-Based and Home-Based |
312 |
1 |
0.50 |
156 |
$27.70 |
$4,321.20 |
Follow-up questions |
180 |
1 |
0.08 |
15 |
$27.70 |
$415.50 |
Total Burden and Costs: |
315 |
N/A |
$8,725.50 |
|||
There are no additional costs to respondents.
The total cost to the Federal government for the data collection activities under this request will be about $545,000. These estimates of costs come from Urban Institute's budgeted estimates and include labor rates and direct costs.
Activity |
Estimated Cost |
Conduct study (including costs to collect data, conduct analyses, and/or expert consultation) |
$415,000 |
Dissemination |
$130,000 |
Total costs over the request period |
$545,000 |
The team added 5 minutes to the burden to account for the time that a subset of respondents may need to answer or clarify existing answers to survey questions.
Table B includes the planned data collection schedule. The research team plans to publicly disseminate detailed information about the study methodology following the completion of data collection. See Supporting Statement B, section B7 for additional information about plans for dissemination.
Table B. Estimated Data Collection Schedule
Activity |
Description |
Estimated Timeframe (after OMB approval) |
Survey data collection |
Outreach to EHS program administrators and survey administration |
Months 1-8 |
Analysis and dissemination |
Analyze survey data and disseminate findings |
Months 9-12 |
No exceptions are necessary for this information collection.
Instrument 1: Survey of Staff Recruitment, Training, and Professional Development in Early Head Start - Center-Based Only
Instrument 2: Survey of Staff Recruitment, Training, and Professional Development in Early Head Start - Home-Based Only
Instrument 3: Survey of Staff Recruitment, Training, and Professional Development in Early Head Start - Center-Based and Home-Based
Attachment A: Grant Recipient Outreach Email Scripts
Attachment B: Grant Recipient Outreach Call Script
Attachment C: Survey Pre-Notice
Attachment D: Instrument Preamble (Informed Consent)
Attachment E: Grant Recipient Follow-Up Email and Phone Scripts
1 OMB #: 0970-0148
2 Examples of sensitive topics include (but not limited to): social security number; sex behavior and attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating and demeaning behavior; critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close relationships, e.g., family, pupil-teacher, employee-supervisor; mental and psychological problems potentially embarrassing to respondents; religion and indicators of religion; community activities which indicate political affiliation and attitudes; legally recognized privileged and analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians and ministers; records describing how an individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment; receipt of economic assistance from the government (e.g., unemployment or WIC or SNAP); immigration/citizenship status.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Berger, Rebecca |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2024-07-20 |