Supporting and Learning from Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Implementation Research and Evaluation: Understanding the Two-Phase Grant Structure to Inform Future Research

OMB Control No.: 0970-0356

Expiration Date: 03/31/2018

Supporting and Learning from Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Implementation Research and Evaluation

Attachment A: Initial Phone Interview Guide for Grantees

16 Respondents

60 Minutes

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 70 minutes per response, including the time to review related information and instructions and to schedule and complete the interview. This information collection is voluntary. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to: Reports Clearance Officer (Attn: OMB/PRA 0970-XXXX), Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services, 330 C Street, SW, Washington, D.C. 20201.

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this phone interview. My name is [NAME] and this is my colleague [NAME]. We are both researchers at the Urban Institute. As you know, the Urban Institute has a contract from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families to support the efforts of grantees awarded CCDBG Implementation Research and Evaluation Planning grants. As part of that contract, we are engaging in a data collection to objectively document how the planning process unfolds for grantees and the benefits and challenges of having a two-stage grant structure, that is, having a separate planning grant now and an implementation grant in the future. The information collected will be used for internal planning purposes only, to guide ACF’s future research activities.

Although we appreciate speaking with you, your participation in the interview is completely voluntary. Your decision to participate in this interview and the overall data collection will not affect any funding you may be receiving or your eligibility to receive future government funding.

At the conclusion of the evaluation, we will write a final report and submit it to the federal government. When we write our report and discuss the study findings, information from all informants is compiled and presented so that no one person is identified. We will not attribute responses to you or your state or territory. However, although individuals will not be cited as sources, a reader might be able to infer the identity of the information source given the small number of grantees.

In efforts to protect your privacy, the report will be an internal document; it will not be published or shared beyond the evaluation team and the federal government. We will not share a copy of the report with your agency or any other grantees. Further, the report will be submitted to the government after implementation grants have been awarded; your participation in this interview and the responses you provide will have no bearing on any grant award decisions.

The interview will last about one hour. You may skip any question you do not wish to answer and you may end the interview at any time. Although you may not directly benefit from participation, this data collection will ultimately be used internally by the Administration for Children and Families for future research planning. Feedback provided by grantees will be crucial in this process.

We value the information you will share with us today and want to make sure we accurately capture all the details. A research assistant will take typed notes as we speak and will label the file with a unique identification number, and not your name or your agency’s name. We will audio record the interview to help fill in our notes later, but we will not share this recording with anyone outside the evaluation team and will destroy the file after our notes are cleaned and complete.

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number for this collection is 0970-0356.

Do you have any questions about the data collection? [Answer questions as needed]

Do you agree to participate today?

Okay, let’s get started. Please keep in mind we have read your grant application and are familiar with your overall project. We have a list of guiding questions we would like to cover, but this will be an open discussion and an opportunity for you to share more with us.

1. Can you summarize for us your agency’s motivation for applying for the planning grant?

Probe on how this research project aligns with upcoming changes to CCDBG policies and practices in the state/territory, and anything that is unique about the state/territory context.

2. Summarize for me how you are using planning grant resources and structuring your planning activities in the next year.

Probe on milestones and progress made, resources used to build capacity, and any delays or challenges faced.

1. Do you anticipate any changes in your research plans at this point? If so, why?

1. Now we would like to talk more about your agency’s data and research capacity.

   1. To start, what do you see as the strengths of your agency in terms of conducting research and evaluation on CCDBG implementation? (Probe on data systems, research partnerships, research experience, team qualifications.)

   2. In what areas do you need to build capacity? (Probe on data systems, research partnerships, evaluation design, and data analysis.)

   3. In what ways do you think this planning grant opportunity can help you build capacity?

   4. Do you anticipate retaining any of the capacity you are building even if you do not receive the implementation grant? If so, what and how?

2. Next, we’d like to talk about the two-stage grant structure—that is, having a separate planning grant and implementation grant.

   1. What do you see as the benefits of this structure?

Probe on benefits of an 18-month planning period, specifically, time to:

• Strengthen partnerships and collaboration (internal and external to Lead Agency)

• Explore data sources more carefully

• Carry out preliminary analysis to develop hypotheses, test research approaches, etc.

• Formulate research questions

• Focus more explicitly on building research and evaluation capacity.

2. Do you see any challenges with this structure?

• What do you think about the length of the planning grant? Is 18 months appropriate?

• Was your agency ready to implement research sooner but had to wait?

• Would having a full grant up front been better (to secure external partners and other vendors, etc.)?

• Were the findings needed to inform policy changes that needed to be made sooner?

Probes for challenges with timing of grant awards, length of period of performance, funding amount, specific grant requirements, no guarantee of implementation grant.

3. Would your agency have applied for a full implementation grant if no planning grant was offered?

4. Would you have done anything differently if implementation grants were immediately awarded to carry out research? Are there any steps that you wanted to take sooner that you could not take under the planning grant?

1. Is there anything else you would like to share that I have not asked about already?

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