Cover Letter

SUBMISSION OF INFORMATION COLLECTION UNDER THE

Request for Approval under AHRQ’s Generic Clearance “Questionnaire and Data Collection Testing, Evaluation, and Research for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality” (OMB Control Number: 0935-0124)

DATE OF REQUEST: 03/31/2022

SUB AGENCY (I/C): HHS/AHRQ

TITLE: MEPS Alternative Sampling Design Pilot Test

GENERIC CLEARANCE UNDER OMB#: 0935-0124 EXP. DATE: 01/31/2024

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this request is to design and implement a sequential multimode pilot study of a screening instrument, with a mail “push-to-Web” screener followed by a paper screener mailed to nonrespondents. The pilot is part of a plan to develop a two-phase address-based sampling (ABS) approach as an alternative to the current sampling method of selecting respondents from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). One of the primary goals of MEPS is to produce reliable estimates of medical expenditure totals. This places additional demands on the survey and distinguishes it from most household surveys like the NHIS that primarily produces estimates of means and proportions. The distribution of expenditures is very uneven, with most households having relatively low expenditures and a very small proportion having very large expenditures. The skewness of this distribution makes estimation of total expenditures dependent on having a large sample so that enough of the high expenditure households are included. In addition, the MEPS design has included oversampling race/ethnicity minority households to improve the precision of estimates in these domains. The proposed pilot of the web-based screening instrument will test this new design by selecting an address-based sample for a screener to collect demographics and measures that may help identify race/ethnicity minority households and to predict high medical expenditures. The questionnaire modes will be presented sequentially where Web is the only mode available initially, and then the paper questionnaire is introduced in nonresponse follow-up contacts.

TOTAL ANNUAL BURDEN APPROVED: 8,900.

BURDEN USED TO DATE: 800.

BURDEN THIS REQUEST: 567 hours.

FEDERAL COST: ____$21,570

IS RACE AND ETHNICITY DATA COLLECTED AS REQUIRED?

_____x _YES ___ NO ______ N/A

OBLIGATION TO RESPOND:

____x_VOLUNTARY

______ REQUIRED TO OBTAIN OR RETAIN BENEFITS

______ MANDATORY

HOW WILL THIS SURVEY BE OFFERED?

__X____ WEB SITE

__ _ TELEPHONE INTERVIEW

__X ___ MAIL RESPONSE [email]

____ IN PERSON INTERVIEW

_____ OTHER: ___________________________________

CONTACT INFORMATION:

NAME: ___________Erwin Brown_____________________

TELEPHONE NUMBER: 301.427.1652______________________

EMAIL ADDRESS: ebrown@ahrq.gov______________________