Instructions

Instructions for QRS Assessment Screener:

Hello. Am I speaking with [confirm respondent’s name and job title]?

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. My name is ________ and I work for Child Trends, an independent research organization. We are part of a research team led by Mathematica Policy Research that has been contracted by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to learn more about quality rating systems (QRS) and how they are implemented and evaluated across different states. The program that you administer, [program name], has been selected for inclusion in the research study.

In this interview, I will ask you a set of questions about the data you collect in [QRS program name] and how you use data for evaluation and system improvement.

This information about data management and data systems will not be aggregated across the sites in the study or published publicly. Rather, our study team will use the information to help us identify research questions that can be pursued in other activities of our QRS Assessment project. These activities include a case study and analyses of available QRS data.

We expect that the whole interview will take 60 minutes or less to complete.

We would like to record our interview with you so that we can review your responses after the interview and capture accurately the information you share with us. Do we have your permission to record this interview? [Interviewer: Confirm respondent’s permission]

Do you have any questions before we get started? [Interviewer: Respond to questions]

Let’s get started.