Qs and As with OMB on SPI Pilot Study

This document addresses questions or points raised by Shelly Martinez during a call with BJS on 5-13-14 about the SPI Pilot Study

Changes made to the SPI Pilot Study questionnaire

1. Interviewer Set-up (IS) [page 3] - Removed first two paragraphs of text. The change is reflected in the revised version (5-15-13) of the SPI questionnaire.

2. Question about “currently serving” in the military which was DEMOA1 [page 6] – We removed this question entirely and the change is reflected in the revised version (5-15-13) of the questionnaire.

3. Race questions in the incident characteristics section, specifically questions CJEA2 and CJEB5 [pages 40 and 44, respectively] – The wording (i.e., one or more) is now consistent with the way we collect race in the Demographics section. We called out these changes in comments in the 5-15-13 version of the instrument.

4. Health insurance question in the SES section, specifically items SES30A, B, and F [page 91] – We added text from the ACS into the question wording for these items and the changes are called out in the 5-15-13 version of the instrument with a comment for each of these items.

Justification of the disability questions in the SPI Pilot Study questionnaire

In the American Community Survey (ACS) persons are asked a set of six questions on disabilities. These questions were developed by the Washington Group on Disabilities to measure the prevalence of disabilities in the general population and to provide a standard measure of disabilities for comparisons across populations. Through coordination with Julie Weeks at the National Center for Health Statistics, BJS adapted these six questions to fit within our inmate surveys. The questions required slight modifications. Below, you will find the ACS questions lined up with the Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI) questions for direct comparison. Notice that in the SPI questions PH40-PH45, the questions were slightly altered to reflect the change in reporting method between the ACS and the SPI. BJS modified the ACS questions to be reflective of asking the inmate directly (instead of asking about another person in the household) about having a disability. Also, it was necessary to modify question 19 in the ACS (PH45 in SPI) to be reflective of activities in which inmates would be involved because the ACS examples do not apply to an inmate population. Questions PH40-PH45 that are currently in the SPI questionnaire are the exact six questions that were fielded in year three of BJS’s National Inmate Survey (NIS) which was part of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

Survey questions:

ACS 17a Is this person deaf or do you have serious difficulty hearing?

SPI PH40 Are you deaf or do you have serious difficulty hearing?

ACS 17b Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

SPI PH41 Are you blind or do you have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

ACS 18a Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

SPI PH42 Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, do you have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

ACS 18b Does this person have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

SPI PH43 Do you have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

ACS 18c Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?

SPI PH44 Do you have difficulty dressing or bathing?

ACS 19 Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, does this person have difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping?

SPI PH45 Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, do you have difficulty doing activities on your own such as going to meal time, going outside, working in or outside of this facility, going to classes, or attending programs?

The goal of PH46 below is to differentiate between difficulty due to a physical health problem and a mental health problem since BJS measures these problems separately. This is important to differentiate because the seriousness of a mental health problem is measured by the degree of difficulty associated with daily activities. This question was also asked in year three of BJS’s NIS.

SPI PH46 [IF PH45 = 1] Is the difficulty you experience doing activities on your own caused by…

	Yes	No
PH46a. A physical problem?	1	2
PH46b. A mental or emotional problem?	1	2

Items PH47 and PH48 below are questions that were added to the 2014 SPI questionnaire to assess the level of difficulty associated with physical/mental health problems. This is an approach used to determine the severity of the physical/mental health problem and is based on a similar approach used in the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to measure serious mental illness. Adopting this similar approach will facilitate comparisons of inmates to the general population with respect to physical/mental health problems and the severity of the problems.

SPI PH47 [IF PH46 = 1] As a result of a physical problem, how much difficulty do you have doing activities on your own?

1. Only a little difficulty

2. Some difficulty

3. A lot of difficulty

DK/REF

SPI PH48 [IF PH46b = 1] As a result of a mental or emotional problem, how much difficulty do you have doing activities on your own?

1. Only a little difficulty

2. Some difficulty

3. A lot of difficulty

DK/REF

Items PH49 and PH50 below are two questions that stem from a single question in the 2004 SPI. The question in the 2004 SPI asked whether an inmate had a learning disability, such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder. However, in the course of developing the 2014 SPI, we learned that ADD/ADHD is not considered a learning disability which necessitated dividing the one 2004 SPI question into two separate questions for the 2014 SPI. Item PH51 is pulled directly from the 2004 SPI survey.

SPI PH49 Has a doctor, psychologist, or teacher ever told you that you have an attention deficit disorder, sometimes called ADD or ADHD?

1. YES

2. NO

DK/REF

SPI PH50 Has a doctor, psychologist, or teacher ever told you that you have a learning disability, such as dyslexia or dyscalculia?

1. YES

2. NO

DK/REF

PH51 Have you ever been enrolled in special education classes, sometimes called SPED?

1. YES

2. NO

DK/REF

Length of survey consent form

Shelly said the form is long and legally it does not need to include all of the detailed information that it includes now, although Shelly said she understands that the IRB may require it. BJS discussed this with RTI and while we do agree with Shelly that the consent form is long, Shelly is correct in that the IRB requirements for the consent document require that it cover a number of elements as defined by the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and meeting all of those requirements results in lots of text.  RTI said SPI is not the only survey with a long consent; the NIS consent form was similar in length. RTI provided BJS with a consent form checklist that spells out the various items that must be included in the consent so BJS understands the guidance from OHRP.  Originally the SPI consent form was a little shorter going into the IRB review and some of the requirements resulted in BJS/RTI having to add text to the document. BJS and RTI can definitely try to identify places to shorten it as we work on plans for the national study, but we aren’t confident that we’ll be able to shave significant length from the form.  RTI also provided BJS with a guidance document for conducting research with inmates that the OHRP provides. While it doesn’t speak to the content of the consent explicitly, it describes what the IRB must consider in granting approval for a study that involves a sensitive population such as inmates. BJS can provide OMB with the documents RTI sent if OMB is interested.