ED Response to OMB comments

MEMORANDUM

To: Nicole Cafarella, OMB
Ray Valdivieso, IES
Amy Feldman, IES

From: Neal Finkelstein, REL West
Thomas Hanson, REL West
Phyliss Weinstock, (Berkeley Policy Associates)

Cc: Gary Estes, REL West
Nikola Filby, REL West
Katrina Ingalls, RIMS

Date: July 13, 2007

Re: Response to OMB Questions from July 7: Program for Infant Toddler Care (PITC)

Thank you again for taking the time today to discuss this study and, in particular, the incentive structure for participants. We look forward to your review of the following responses and will wait to hear from you before any revisions are made to the Supporting Statements. If there are any questions or if additional information would be helpful, please do not hesitate to contact Neal Finkelstein at nfinkel@wested.org or by phone at (415)615-3171.

1. Please provide more information to Question 1 in the original passback. How will the results of this study impact child care quality and child development?

If the study finds that the PITC program has a positive impact on child care quality and child development, these results will be used as a basis for securing additional funding in order to further disseminate the program and replicate its positive impacts. If the study finds the PITC program does not have a positive impact, or has differential impacts on various dimensions of child care quality and child development, these results will be used to redesign and improve the program or its implementation.

2. Please eliminate the $5 gift card for each parent consent form submitted. Additionally, please reduce the provider caregiver incentives to $20 and the parents/guardians incentives for each round of child outcomes data collection to $30.

We believe we need to maintain most incentives at the level proposed in our supporting statement in order to recruit and retain representative samples of programs and children. Parents and child care providers are extremely busy and need to be reasonably compensated for taking time away from other obligations in order to participate in the study. In addition, successful longitudinal research requires that we build a positive association with respondents. Attrition increases when respondents do not feel appreciated and valued. Proposed incentives are noted below:

$5 gift card incentive for programs for collection of each parent consent form:

Consistent with our discussion today, we propose to redesign this incentive to a per program or per classroom payment rather than a payment for each parent consent form collected. The goal of this incentive is to reward the programs for their general cooperation and their assistance in discussing the study with caregivers and parents and collecting and mailing informed consent forms.

For child care centers, we propose to change this to a $15 gift card per classroom (a maximum of two classrooms per center will be included) to be paid to each program that returns the completed packet of caregiver and parent informed consent forms within two weeks. A completed packet will include a minimum of two caregiver forms per classroom and three to six (depending on classroom size) parent forms per classroom. All forms are counted including those that indicate refusal to participate.

For family child care homes, we propose a $15 gift card for each home that submits completed informed consent forms from all parents of enrolled children under the age of twenty-four months. Again, all forms are counted, including those that indicate refusal to participate.

$25 gift card incentive for each caregiver(caregiving staff/teacher/provider) who participates in each of the two rounds of data collection: Caregivers will be completing a questionnaire about their teaching background and practices, as well as brief child assessments. The $25 gift card represents only a modest reward for the time and effort involved, and will help foster a positive attitude towards the study. Lowering this incentive risks higher attrition and/or additional costs in researchers’ time to repeatedly follow up with providers.

• The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), sponsored by the National Center for Educational Statistics, (2003), paid child care providers $20 to complete a half-hour telephone interview. We believe raising this payment to $25 for the Study of the PITC (2007 and 2008) is reasonable, because we will be asking not only for the questionnaire but also for caregivers’ cooperation in conducting program observations and in answering several additional interview questions at the time of the observation.

$50 gift card incentive for each parent who participates in each round of child data collection: Experience from past studies indicates that this is the minimum reasonable compensation for the combination of parents’ time, child’s time, and use of the family’s home that is necessary for the child outcomes data collection. Parents will be asked for a total of 90 minutes per each round of data collection, including completion of both the parent questionnaire and the in-person child assessment. Further, parents will be asked to allow interviewers into their homes, and to support the interviewers in completing the interview/assessment of their very young children. Evidence from past studies includes:

• The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), sponsored by the National Center for Educational Statistics, provided parent participants with $50 plus a gift book for each child during the first round of data collection (2001-2002) and $30 plus a gift book for each during the second round of data collection (2003). Parent/child data collection burden was similar to that for the Study of the Program for Infant Toddler Care. Parents completed an interview and children participated in an in-home child assessment, for a total of about ninety minutes of parents’ time during each wave.

• The Child Development Supplement II (2002-2003) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, sponsored by the NICHD and NSF, provided each participating family with a minimum of $95. This included $75 for parent interviews and $25 for each child participating in an assessment/interview.

• The Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (1998-2003), funded by NICHD, paid parents $50 for completing interviews during field visits in both the one-year and three-year rounds of data collection.

3.Please consider sending an advanced letter to program directors in addition to the steps you outlined in your answer to Question 4 of the original passback.

The study team will have several early contacts-- including in-person, mail, and telephone contacts--with program directors during the recruitment/enrollment period and prior to baseline data collection (See Supporting Statement B, Steps in Sample Selection.) We will include a letter to program directors confirming enrollment and notifying them of upcoming baseline data collection activities.

4. Please use the IES confidentiality pledge without additional language, as that gets into legal matters that have already been agreed to with IES.

We agree to use the IES confidentiality pledge, which we understand to read as follows:

Responses to this data collection will be used only for statistical purposes. The reports prepared for this study will summarize findings across the sample and will not associate responses with a specific program or individual. We will not provide information that identifies you or your program to anyone outside the study team, except as

required by law.

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