The 2024 National Survey of Early Care and Education
OMB Information Collection Request
Supporting Statement
Part A
April 2023
Submitted By:
Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
Administration for Children and Families
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
4th Floor, Mary E. Switzer Building
330 C Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 20201
Project Officers: Ivelisse Martinez-Beck and Ann Rivera (OPRE)
Type of Request: This Information Collection Request is for a new information collection as part of the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE). We are requesting 12 months of approval.
Description of Request: The 2024 NSECE, a set of four coordinated nationally representative surveys, is preceded by the 2019 NSECE (OMB #0970-0391) and the 2012 NSECE (OMB #0970-0391), which assembled the first national portrait of the demand for and supply of early care and education (ECE) since the 1990’s. The 2024 NSECE will collect information in a manner that facilitates comparisons with the data collected in the 2019 and 2012 NSECE and allows for examination of changes in the characteristics of households and their use of non-parental care and the changing landscape of ECE programs. The 2024 NSECE will also reflect how funding that resulted from legislative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic was allocated and the extent to which it has addressed both the stress of the pandemic and the opportunity for initiating improvements to the ECE system. We do not intend for this information to be used as the principal basis for public policy decisions.
Time Sensitivity: Data collection approval is requested by August 1, 2023 and no later than September 1, 2023, so that timely data collection can take place during the academic year. To provide representative data on households need for and use of care and the supply of ECE services, this data collection will survey households with children under age 13 and ECE providers of different types throughout the U.S. The 2024 NSECE must begin outreach, screening, and recruitment of households and providers as early as possible in order to ensure sufficient time to complete survey data collection with households and ECE providers throughout all 50 states and D.C., and, consequently, with workforce members, before the end of the typical program year.
This statement covers the main data collection effort for the 2024 NSECE, funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children & Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). There are no legal or administrative requirements that necessitate this collection. ACF is undertaking the collection at the discretion of the agency.
ACF seeks approval for information collection activities as part of their ongoing effort to better understand the availability and use of early care and education (ECE) across the nation. ACF has contracted with NORC at the University of Chicago to complete this work. Through a set of four inter-related surveys, the 2024 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) will collect information on (1) home- and center-based ECE services available (supply) to families with children ages birth through 5 years, not yet in kindergarten; (2) characteristics of the center-based ECE workforce providing these services; and (3) households with children under age 13 years. These surveys of center- and home-based providers, center-based workforce, and households will gather nationally-representative information on the supply of ECE available to families across all income levels; the demand for ECE; the factors influencing parents’ choices and utilization of ECE for their children; and the interaction of supply and demand - specifically the extent to which families’ needs and preferences coordinate well with providers’ offerings and constraints. The 2024 NSECE will generate a robust sample of providers serving families with low incomes of all racial, ethnic, language, and cultural backgrounds, in diverse geographic areas. Providers include programs that do or do not participate in the child care subsidy program; regulated, registered, or otherwise listed home-based providers; unregulated, or “unlisted,” home-based providers who are not on a state or national list; and center-based programs (e.g., private, community-based child care, Head Start, and school-based settings) and center-based workforce.
The 2024 NSECE is preceded by three prior NSECE data collections1: the 2012 NSECE, which created the first national profile of ECE since the early 1990’s; the 2019 NSECE, which captured information to help assess how multiple programmatic and policy changes introduced since 2012 had changed the ECE landscape; and the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up, which re-interviewed provider and workforce (classroom staff) survey respondents in the 2019 NSECE between late 2020 and early 2022 to show how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted the supply of care available to families. Before the start of the pandemic, there were multiple indications of significant challenges in the ECE system resulting in it being labeled with such terms as “fragile” and “fragmented,” and the COVID-19 pandemic only further exposed and exacerbated these weaknesses. Since the 2019 NSECE, there have been three major legislative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic involving substantial additional funding for child care subsidies (i.e., Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplementary Appropriations Act, and American Rescue Plan Act) and at the same time substantial new flexibility to Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) lead agencies for implementation of these funds. Also, since 2019, the U.S. economy has undergone significant shifts including a pandemic-related downturn followed by inflation rates not seen in three decades, as well as the persistence of work from home and remote work. These major economic shifts may alter parents’ use of ECE as well as the labor market and economic forces in which ECE providers operate.
The 2024 NSECE is well-positioned to identify patterns of ECE recovery and children’s participation in ECE during the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, and to capture the effects of major public investments and regulatory efforts aimed at sustaining and strengthening ECE and the ECE workforce. The 2024 NSECE will collect information in a manner that facilitates comparisons with data collected for the 2012 NSECE, the 2019 NSECE, and (where appropriate) the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up Survey. The timing of these collections offers the unique opportunity to capture changes in ECE supply and use from immediately before and during the COVID-19 pandemic through the recovery period and also to examine longer-term patterns and trends dating back to 2012.
The 2024 NSECE data will provide consistent and representative data to ACF for better understanding how the ECE landscape has changed since 2012 and the extent to which funding that resulted from legislative responses is associated with changes in the ECE system. The 2024 NSECE will capture information on center-based providers, home-based providers, and center-based classroom assigned instructional staff (workforce) that will allow the study team to document the characteristics of the supply of ECE across the U.S. in the first half of 2024. At the same time, the 2024 NSECE will collect information of households with children under age 13 in order to describe their characteristics and their use of child care and early education services in the first half of 2024. Accurate data from households, ECE providers, and staff across all types of ECE will make it possible to provide multiple perspectives on the recovery. The methodological innovations built in to the NSECE data collection also make it possible to consider a range of critical issues in ECE over longer periods of time, building on the availability of data on both supply and demand from the same geographical areas, detailed data on family employment patterns and ECE search, data on all types of home-based ECE, and capacity to look at access to ECE in a multifaceted way by utilizing multiple sources of data in the NSECE. The 2024 NSECE data will be used to develop analytic products that describe key findings. NORC will also develop public-use and restricted-use data files with supporting documentation and technical assistance materials that will be made available to the research community for further analysis.
The information collected is meant to contribute to the body of knowledge on ACF programs. It is not intended to be used as the principal basis for a decision by a federal decision-maker, and is not expected to meet the threshold of influential or highly influential scientific information.
The 2024 NSECE is designed to address the research questions included in Appendix L.
The 2024 NSECE includes four inter-related surveys comprised of three screeners and four questionnaires. The questionnaires include the Household Questionnaire, Home-based Provider Questionnaire, Center-based Provider Questionnaire, and Workforce (Classroom Staff) Questionnaire. These are described in the table below. There are two primary sample sources for the 2024 NSECE’s four component surveys. The sample for the household survey and unlisted home-based provider survey is an address-based sample of housing units drawn from the Delivery Sequence File kept by the U.S. Postal Service. The center-based providers and listed home-based providers are sampled from a comprehensive list of addresses of ECE programs in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, which the NSECE team develops. The workforce (classroom staff) survey sample is generated from completed center-based provider surveys. Collectively, these surveys paint a comprehensive picture of the supply of and demand for ECE in the U.S. and offer a clearer understanding of how well families’ needs and preferences match providers’ offerings and constraints. To facilitate over-time comparisons, the 2024 NSECE largely replicates the design of the 2019 and 2012 NSECE, although all three are cross-sectional surveys with no intentional overlap in sampled households, providers, or workforce members. Longitudinal data are not available for households, providers, or workforce members. Despite the relatively large scope of the NSECE and a design that is nationally representative, the data may not be able to describe the experiences of some populations due to imprecise estimates or small sample sizes. Limitations will be noted in NSECE analytic products, data trainings, and materials created to support the use of the data.
Data Collection Activity |
Instruments |
Respondent, Content, Purpose of Collection |
Mode and Duration |
Household Survey |
2024 NSECE Household Screener and Questionnaire |
Respondents: parent or guardian of a child or children under age 13 in households with at least one member child under age 13 Content: household characteristics (such as household composition and income), parents’ employment (employment schedule, employment history, etc.), the use of ECE services (care schedules, care payments and subsidies, attitudes towards various types of care and caregiver, etc.), and search for non-parental care Purpose: to describe the nation’s demand for and use of ECE services |
Screener Modes: web, paper-and-pencil self—administered questionnaire, text message survey, with phone and in-person as needed Questionnaire Modes: web, with phone and in-person interviewing as needed Duration: 60 Minutes |
Home-based Provider Survey |
2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire (Instruments 2 and 2S) |
Respondents: Home-based providers identified through household screening (unlisted home-based providers) or sampled from the provider sampling frame (listed home-based providers) Content: covers many of the same topics as the center-based provider and workforce (classroom staff) questionnaires described below; additional topics include the household composition of the provider, and questions trying to understand the proportion of household income coming from home-based care. Relative to unlisted providers, listed home-based providers are eligible for a number of additional items regarding the type of care provided, which are asked to more formal or market-based providers, including use of curriculum, membership in professional organizations, specific professional development questions, background checks, and inspections Purpose: to describe the full spectrum of individuals who provide care in a home-based setting |
Mode: web, with phone and in-person interviewing as needed Duration: 20 Minutes (unlisted providers); 40 Minutes (listed providers) |
Center-based Provider Survey |
2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire (Instruments 3 and 3S) |
Respondents: center directors and other instructional leaders Content: structural characteristics of care, revenue sources, enrollment, admissions and marketing, enumeration of staff (instructional/non-instructional), and respondent demographics Purpose: to describe the population of centers serving children 5 years and under, not yet in kindergarten |
|
Workforce (Classroom Staff) Survey |
2024 NSECE Workforce (Classroom Staff) Questionnaire (Instruments 4 and 4S) |
Respondents: center-based classroom-assigned instructional staff Content: personal characteristics (demographic, employment-related, education/training); classroom activities; classroom characteristics; attitudes and orientation toward caregiving; and work climate and benefits Purpose: to describe classroom-assigned teachers, assistants, and aides working in a center with at least one child age 5 and under, not yet in kindergarten |
A provider sampling frame will be built from multiple state and national-level lists of ECE providers, including lists of licensed and license-exempt providers maintained by state licensing agencies, the federal Office of Head Start’s list of centers offering Head Start services, additional federal lists of ECE providers, the lists of accredited providers maintained by non-profit agencies such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and a commercially available list of public or private schools offering any grade kindergarten through eighth. Because these are lists for use in program operation or for commercial purposes, they are not the result of data collections subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act. The provider sampling frame will be used for sampling center-based and listed home-based providers.
The 2024 data will be linked at the tract level to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (OMB # 0607-0810) for community-level contextual information, for example, on community poverty density and urban/rural. We plan to make use of school districts’ administrative data to identify district-sponsored ECE centers, and to reduce burden on respondents when data requested in the center-based provider questionnaire are available publicly.
The 2024 NSECE questionnaires also seek permission from respondents to link to external data sources.
Additional linkages to publicly available data may be undertaken by analysts to understand a variety of issues, such as, for example, which families receive child care and financial assistance for their children and how does this impact their ECE choices, what kinds of jobs ECE workers move to after they leave ECE, professional development activities undertaken and degrees earned by individuals working with children, and how licensing requirements and child care subsidies are associated with the types of care offered and used by families in certain areas.
The 2024 NSECE will employ a multi-mode data collection approach that achieves significant cost efficiencies for the government while giving respondents flexibility to select the most convenient mode to complete their questionnaires as the data collection period progresses. The project will emphasize the convenience of web survey completion for all provider and workforce (classroom staff) surveys, as well as the household screener, and will subsequently offer telephone and in-person questionnaire administration options. The project is also planning to implement an option for households to complete the household screener by text message after texting a short code to request the questions. A paper self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) option will also be available for the household screener for respondents to use as needed. Telephone, in-person, and web surveys all reduce respondent burden and produce data that can be prepared for release and analysis faster and more accurately than is the case with pencil-and-paper surveys.
The project will also employ tablet technology to support field interviewer screening, prompting, and interviewing for the 2024 NSECE, which will further reduce respondent burden. Particularly, using tablets will allow interviewers to quickly text and email provider questionnaire URLs while talking with respondents, and allow interviewers to deliver technical support instantly to respondents on completing the web questionnaire.
Additionally, contact materials will include unique QR codes whereby scanning the code with a smartphone camera, respondents will be able to click a link that will take them directly to their respective web screener or web questionnaire. Respondents will enter a unique PIN to access their web screener or web questionnaire.
Three extant national surveys collect data on ECE characteristics and utilization patterns. These surveys are the National Household Education Survey, Early Childhood Program Participation (NHES: ECPP), last conducted in 2019 (OMB# 1850-0768), the Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP), last conducted in 2014 (OMB# 0607-0977), and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, last initiated in 2010-2011 (OMB# 1850-0750), with plans for a new cohort to be initiated in 2023-2024.
While these three national surveys may address some of the data needs relative to households with children, there are no data collection efforts aimed at understanding the institutions, professionals, and individuals working directly with children across all spectra of ECE, nor the relationship between the changing needs of families and these ECE resources.
The NSECE differs from these studies in several important ways:
Measures both ECE supply and demand. The 2024 NSECE would allow for a comparison of data collected from both households and ECE providers in the same geographic areas. Analyses of parents’ ECE choices as well as their decision-making process would be contextualized with detailed information about a sample of available providers in their area.
Oversamples households expected to have low-income or who reside in areas with high proportions of households with low incomes. The proposed design of the 2024 NSECE would implement oversamples that would result in interviews with disproportionately many households with low-income to allow for important subgroup analyses, including examining patterns among subgroups that consider combinations of characteristics, such as employment and income or race/ethnicity and income.
Includes unlisted home-based providers. This study would allow for a more thorough understanding of the role of unlisted home-based providers in ECE. The 2024 NSECE would provide data to describe and analyze which American families use unlisted home-based providers, and how their availability varies by community, socioeconomic status of families, and formal child care market characteristics. We would also be able to understand the demographic characteristics of these providers and how they see their role in caring for children and helping the parents of these children. Research on these topics is important for policy makers as they may inform decisions regarding subsidies paid and professional development available to unlisted home-based providers.
Includes multiple children in household. The 2024 NSECE would provide detailed information about the ECE arrangements of all children in a household age 12 or younger. This data would include the type (or combinations) of arrangements, descriptions of providers, number of hours of care in ECE arrangements, where ECE services are provided, and the cost of the ECE.
Includes detailed non-parental care and parental work schedules. One key feature of the 2024 NSECE household questionnaire is a full week’s schedule of all non-parental ECE (including elementary school attendance) for all age-eligible children in the household, in addition to all employment, schooling, and training activities of each parent or regular caregiver within the household. The comprehensive schedules, along with other rich data from the household and provider surveys, would provide a highly specific aggregate description of the match between parental search requirements for ECE and the actual utilization of ECE.
Allows for 51-state sample. The 2024 NSECE would employ a 51-“state” design (50 states and the District of Columbia), which would permit analysis of policy variation across states. Many of the specific decisions states face depend on market dynamics — how to strengthen regulatory and quality rating standards, what reimbursement rates and co-pay schedules to set, and what supports to providers and individual staff can improve quality in a cost-effective manner. The answers depend on the interaction of supply and demand within a local market, and thus, market data must be gathered at the state and local, not just the national level.
Some ECE providers in the selected sample are small businesses. The proposed data collection approach provides flexibility in timing and mode of interview participation to minimize burden on these businesses and other respondents.
The 2024 NSECE is proposed for one-time collection of data; no reduction in frequency is possible.
In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations at 5 CFR Part 1320 (60 FR 44978, August 29, 1995), ACF published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the agency’s intention to request an OMB review of this information collection activity. This notice was published on January 17th, Volume 88, Number 10, page 2626 - 2627, and provided a sixty-day period for public comment. During the notice and comment period, one comment was received, which is attached. We reviewed the comment, which was from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), in the context of the NSECE research objectives and study design and made the following changes: 1) We added respondent gender identity items to the center-based and home-based provider questionnaires; we found that the items related to respondent gender identity proposed for inclusion in the workforce (classroom staff) and household questionnaires were consistent with their recommendations, but we updated the wording of the question to be consistent with the most recent OMB guidance. 2) We added questions about the respondent’s sexual orientation in the workforce (classroom staff) and household questionnaires. The NSECE questionnaires collect more extensive demographic information from household and workforce respondents than from center- and home-based provider respondents to support policy-relevant analyses related to household and worker characteristics. The center-based and home-based provider questionnaires prioritize collecting information about enrollment, program attributes, and services.
The 2024 NSECE has held multiple meetings of its Technical Expert Panel (TEP). The TEP provides insight and content and technical expertise on various project activities, including informing decisions about the content areas for ECE research, technical elements of survey design, and administration and analysis. The TEP also shares with OPRE and the project team research-related issues from the ECE field. In individual and group consultations, the team described relevant aspects of the NSECE and listened to feedback from these experts. Expert panel members come from research organizations and universities and include the following individuals:
A second expert panel, the 2024 NSECE Content Advisory Team (CAT), contributed to the development of the 2024 NSECE questionnaire design and analysis and reporting strategy that builds on the 2019 NSECE instrumentation and analytic products. The CAT members have the highest order expertise in each ECE topical area and include the following individuals:
Taryn W.
Morrissey |
Roberta
Weber |
Kathleen
Gallagher |
Stephanie
Curenton-Jolly |
Julia R.
Henly |
|
Deborah
Phillips |
Bob Goerge Chapin Hall |
Martha Zaslow Child Trends |
|
We propose to use tokens of appreciation as part of the overall data collection strategy for the 2024 NSECE study. Our proposal is informed by previous NSECE data collections. We list the primary motivations for our proposal below:
To increase the likelihood that data collection can be completed within the data collection window (i.e., before the end of the typical program year). Known differences in patterns in ECE usage and supply among households and providers during the summer months versus the typical program year would compromise data quality and comparability of data across cases if the required timeframe was not met. In the 2012 NSECE we were able to complete data collection before the end of the school year, but in the 2019 NSECE, we had to extend data collection into July, resulting in some compromises in data comprehensiveness.
To minimize bias in estimates, ensuring that the final data sets are representative of the target population, including hard to reach sub-populations such as members of the ECE workforce who have lower levels of education and training in ECE. Both in the 2019 NSECE and the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up, we found that members of the ECE workforce were a particularly challenging population to collect data from, and found some evidence that less-educated workers were especially less likely to participate in the interview.
To ensure that target sample sizes are achieved. Target sample sizes are required to support high priority subgroup analyses that have low prevalence in the population, especially ECE providers and workers in rural areas, paid home-based ECE providers not known to state and national agencies (i.e., unlisted paid home-based providers) and households using child care subsidies. These subgroups, all high priority for analysis, are relatively rare in the population, making it very difficult to interview them in adequate numbers for analyses without achieving high response rates. Analyses of the 2012 and 2019 NSECE most frequently encounter sample size constraints for these subgroups. To increase the numbers of sampled individuals in these groups we would need to expand the geographic areas in which providers are sampled, double the numbers of households screened, or supplement the address-based household sample with households identified from administrative data. These options are not feasible for the 2024 NSECE due to analytic constraints, budget constraints, and lack of national administrative data.
Exhibit 1. Proposed Tokens of Appreciation for the 2024 NSECE
The household survey, unlisted home-based provider survey, and listed home-based provider survey all require a screener completion to determine eligibility for the main interviews. These surveys use a mixed-mode strategy that sends mail invitations to self-administer the screener before following-up with other modes of outreach. Difficulties conducting field outreach to screen sampled units could result in lower screening rates and thus underrepresentation of selected subgroups in the final NSECE interview data. Prepaid tokens of appreciation have been found to be more effective in increasing response rates than promised tokens in mailed invitations to a mail or web survey (Singer and Ye 2013). Pre-paid mail tokens have been shown to produce a larger impact per dollar than pre-paid tokens by other modes or post-paid tokens. For example, based on experimentation in the 2017 National Household Education Survey (NHES), the U.S. Department of Education found that $5 cash tokens of appreciation produced higher screener response rates than $2 tokens and, as a result, implemented a $5 pre-paid token in the 2019 NHES (OMB # 1850-0768). Also, the 2020 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), conducted by the Census Bureau for the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (OMB # 0607-0990) used a $2 pre-paid token and found it performed similarly to a $5 pre-paid token in asking households to complete a screener to determine eligibility for a household survey about children. A distinctive feature of pre-paid tokens is that sampled individuals receive the token whether or not they participate in the survey – these tokens are unconditionally given. In addition, providing tokens could potentially affect the sample composition by improving cooperation for sample units who would otherwise be more likely to refuse (e.g., Oscarsson and Arkhede 2020, Singer and Ye 2013). Previous studies have found positive effects of tokens to draw in more respondents from underrepresented groups such as low educated (e.g., Wagner et al. 2022, McGonagle and Freedman 2017, Petrolia and Bhattacharjee 2009, Ryu, Couper, and Marans 2006) and lower income groups (e.g., Ryu, Couper, and Marans 2006, Martin, Abreu, and Winters 2001).
We propose pre-paid tokens to encourage self-administration:
$2 in the initial advance letters for the households and for listed home-based providers to encourage self-administration of their screeners. These pre-paid tokens were previously incorporated in the 2012 and 2019 NSECE designs. Without these tokens, screening rates are likely to fall, jeopardizing the project’s ability to identify and interview eligible individuals within the available time frame and to the desired number of completed interviews.
$5 in the initial advance letters for unlisted home-based providers. This token is to encourage interview completion rather than screener completion, however eligibility of unlisted home-based providers can change quickly as care providing arrangements change, so even a small increase in completion rates is valuable for sample sizes and representativeness of data. This pre-paid token is new to the 2024 NSECE. No experiment is proposed due to lack of power for this relatively small sample. Maximizing the number of interviews completed with unlisted home-based providers is critical to supporting the analytic goals of the 2024 NSECE. Our 2019 NSECE experience indicates that this sample type would benefit from efforts to improve interview completion rates.
A randomized experiment for center-based workforce (classroom staff) members in which workers in a randomly-selected 30% of centers will receive a $5 pre-paid token in their initial advance letter inviting completion of the workforce interview. Workers at the remaining 70% of centers will not receive any pre-paid token in their advance letters. We will evaluate the effectiveness of this pre-paid token using such data collection outcomes as: 1) self-completion of the interview within 4 weeks of the initial mailing, 2) interview completion by the end of the field period, and 3) the number of outreach attempts required for completed interviews. Understanding the experiences of ECE workers is a primary purpose of the 2024 NSECE, we wish to test whether positive impacts of pre-paid tokens in household surveys can carry over to the ECE workforce context. The experimental design could benefit other research efforts anticipated with ECE workers and other low-wage occupational groups of high policy interest.
In addition to the initial pre-paid token to encourage participation in the household screener, we propose additional conditionally-paid tokens at different stages and for different subsets of households sampled for the household survey.
We estimate approximately 20 percent of sampled households will be identified as having a barrier to contact, such as gated communities, locked buildings, drop-point addresses not physically connected to a dwelling, or other barriers. These households may differ systematically in their financial circumstances, household composition, or access to or use of ECE, thus it is important that the NSECE reflect these households appropriately in the final data. We will send a postal mailing to these households once they have been identified, encouraging screener completion. A randomly-selected 50% of these households will receive a letter offering a $5 token upon screener completion; the remaining 50% of these household will receive a very similar letter but with no mention of token of appreciation. We will evaluate the effectiveness of this conditional screener completion token using such data collection outcomes as: 1) self-completion of screeners within 4 weeks of mailing, 2) screener completion by the end of the field period, and 3) completion of the household survey among eligible households, and the number of outreach attempts required for each of these three outcomes. (The unlisted home-based provider sample identified from households in this experiment is not expected to have adequate power for testing effects on completion of the unlisted home-based provider interview.) The household screening rate in the 2019 NSECE was lower than in the 2012 NSECE, in large part due to larger numbers of households with barriers to contact in 2019. We are anticipating at least as many households with similar barriers in 2024, and propose this token as a possible way to mitigate these barriers.
Similar to the $20 post-paid token received by households completing the 2012 and 2019 NSECE household surveys, households will receive a $25 post-paid token upon completion of an eligible household questionnaire. We propose a modest increase from $20 to $25 recognizing decreased purchasing power of a dollar from 2012 to 2024.
An additional $15 post-paid token is proposed to achieve sample balance and improve the representativeness of the interviewed sample. We will offer an additional $15 token upon interview completion to any households belonging to sub-groups that have an overall completion rate (screener return rates multiplied by household response rates) that is 10 percent or more below the overall completion rate for the full sample. We will examine the interview completion rates by the following characteristics at the census tract level: urban/rural (RUCA, metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural), racial/ethnic composition of census tract (3-levels), mode of screener completion (self vs interviewer-administered), Census Bureau tract level Low Response Score from the most current Planning Database available at the time of data collection launch (3-levels), percentage of households in tract speaking a language other than English at home, and presence in special geographic locations such as tribal area/military location/non-standard postal routes. Failing to have enough number of completes from hard-to-survey subpopulations defined by these characteristics could lead to nonresponse bias in the NSECE survey estimates, such as, for racial minority and low-income subpopulations. Although we do not propose a randomized assignment, we will assess the effectiveness of this sample representativeness token through quasi-experimental difference-in-difference methods, exploiting overlapping membership of households in different subgroups. We will evaluate the sample representativeness token in terms of final interview completion rates, total token cost per completed interview, and number of outreach attempts required per completed interview. This token will help the project address subgroups with weaker overall completion rates, so that the final household data set can be as representative as possible of the target population.
In prior NSECE data collections 2012, 2019, and for the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up, NSECE field interviewers found that the use of in-kind gifts of appreciation (e.g., magnets, pens, small plants, etc.) were helpful tools to successfully gain cooperation among sampled individuals, in addition to the honoraria offered for their time to complete the survey. The diverse make-up of the NSECE sampled populations meant that sample members had unique concerns about participating in the survey, including questions about privacy and future use of data. As this approach was used more extensively as data collection progressed, interviewers found that in-kind gifts were a successful tool to building rapport and gaining trust, which laid the groundwork for motivating these respondents to participate.
Small in-kind gifts can also provide field interviewers with another reason to approach sampled individuals whom they have already attempted to contact in the past without success, thereby retaining this tool for cases that require more effort to gain cooperation. Field interviewers will be trained on the types of cases for which in-kind gifts will be most useful, but a degree of flexibility will be allowed in order to respond most appropriately to the specific needs of each individual case. Where in-person outreach is not feasible, in-kind gifts may be sent to respondents.
The project captures personally identifying information (PII) throughout the data collection process and in the questionnaires to recruit and contact sampled households, providers and classroom staff to participate in the survey.
PII collected in the household screener and questionnaire includes the following: 1) names and contact information of individuals looking after children who are not their own (collected in the screener) to select an unlisted home-based provider, 2) child care provider names to capture the types of care used by the household, and 3) names of household members to determine who lives in the household. The project also requests permission to search state or local government records for child-care subsidy, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (Food Stamps), TANF, WIC, Medicaid, or other programs that provide assistance to families. In order to do this, the questionnaire collects the full name and date of birth for each child. At the end of the questionnaire, the project also captures the respondent’s email address, mailing address, and phone number in order to provide a token of appreciation and for future contact if needed.
In the home-based provider survey, the project collects contact information needed for recruitment, including provider’s email address, phone number, and mailing address. The questionnaire also requests permission to search state or national employment records, college attendance or professional development records, or state data on licensing and/or subsidies. In order to conduct the search, the project collects the respondent’s full name, phone number, business name, business address, and date of birth.
For the center-based provider survey, the project collects contact information needed for recruitment, including center email address, phone number, and mailing address as well as contact information for the individual identified as the questionnaire respondent (name, phone number, and email), if different from the center’s contact information. In addition, the questionnaire collects classroom staff names and contact information such as phone and email for the individuals selected for the workforce (classroom staff) survey if this information is different from the center’s. This is necessary in order to choose and contact the respondent(s) for the workforce (classroom staff) survey.
For the workforce (classroom staff) survey, the project may collect additional contact information from the individuals selected for the survey as part of the recruitment process (such as personal mailing address). The project also requests permission to search state or national employment records, college attendance or professional development records, or state data on licensing and/or subsidies. In order to conduct the search, the questionnaire collects the respondent’s name, phone number, business name, business address, and date of birth.
Respondent contact information (name, phone, email, address) is also requested at the end of each survey should we need to re-contact the respondent for any reason.
Information collected will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. Respondents will be informed of all planned uses of data, that their participation is voluntary, and that their information will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. As specified in the contract, the Contractor will comply with all Federal and Departmental regulations for private information.
Due to the sensitive nature of this research (see A.11 for more information), the study will obtain a Certificate of Confidentiality. The study team has applied for this Certificate. The Certificate of Confidentiality helps to assure participants that their information will be kept private to the fullest extent permitted by law and will be included in the informed consent statements.
As specified in the contract, the Contractor shall protect respondent privacy to the extent permitted by law and will comply with all Federal and Departmental regulations for private information. The Contractor has developed a Data Safety and Monitoring Plan that assesses all protections of respondents’ PII. The Contractor shall ensure that all of its employees, subcontractors (at all tiers), and employees of each subcontractor, who perform work under this contract/subcontract, are trained on data privacy issues and comply with the above requirements.
As specified in the contract, the Contractor shall use Federal Information Processing Standard compliant encryption (Security Requirements for Cryptographic Module, as amended) to protect all instances of sensitive information during storage and transmission. The Contractor shall securely generate and manage encryption keys to prevent unauthorized decryption of information, in accordance with the Federal Processing Standard. The Contractor shall: ensure that this standard is incorporated into the Contractor’s property management/control system; establish a procedure to account for all laptop computers, desktop computers, and other mobile devices and portable media that store or process sensitive information. Any data stored electronically will be secured in accordance with the most current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requirements and other applicable Federal and Departmental regulations. In addition, the Contractor must submit a plan for minimizing to the extent possible the inclusion of sensitive information on paper records and for the protection of any paper records, field notes, or other documents that contain sensitive or PII that ensures secure storage and limits on access.
The Contractor will disseminate data files for each of the 2024 NSECE surveys with varying levels of restriction. The Contractor will create public-use data files and two levels of restricted-use files. The public use files and the first level of restricted use files will be available through the Child and Family Data Archive (CFData). The public-use files will be available for download; researchers seeking to use the level-1 restricted-use data will need to get approval from CFData before access to the data is granted. To provide data to the research community as soon as possible, the Contractor may also make the public-use and level-1 restricted-use data available while CFData processes the files. The Contractor will provide access to second-level restricted-use data which may include state and county identifiers as well as linking variables for cluster-level analyses and county- and cluster-level sampling.
At the close of the household questionnaire, respondents are asked to provide consent for the project to access administrative records from government subsidy programs. Respondents (parents or guardians) who grant such consent are then asked to provide the full names, dates of birth, and the street address of their children under age 13. Such sensitive information is required in order to match administrative records to survey data. The availability and use of child care subsidies is a key research topic of this study. These data require extensive questionnaire batteries for collection and are even then very difficult for parents to report accurately. Collection of administrative records would improve the quality of subsidy-related analyses that could be completed using the NSECE data. Respondents are free to refuse consent for records access, and in this case will not be asked for personal identifying information.
The home-based provider and workforce (classroom staff) questionnaires include similar requests, seeking permission to search state or national employment records and other data sources that contain information about college attendance or professional development. Respondents who consent will be asked to provide their full names, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth. Such sensitive information is needed to match administrative records to survey data. Collection of administrative records would help improve our understanding of why some people leave the ECE field, where they go, and how much education and training helps them succeed in the field or elsewhere in the job market.
The household, home-based provider, and workforce (classroom staff) questionnaires ask respondents to report their total household income the year preceding questionnaire completion (calendar year 2023). Questionnaires ask respondents to report income as an exact dollar amount. Since income may be difficult to remember or report, if respondents do not know or refuse to provide this information, the questionnaires then ask them to describe income by pre-defined approximate ranges, such as less than $15,000, $15,001 to $22,500, and so on.
These same questionnaires have additional questions about respondents’ current financial situation, such as recent food insecurity, and receipt of government assistance for individuals with low incomes. Questions assessing the languages spoken, sex or gender identity, and the race/ethnicity of children in care or other workers in the classroom may also prove challenging for respondents of the household, home-based provider, and workforce (classroom staff) surveys to answer. The respondent may not know or may not feel comfortable making that assessment for other people. Although these questions are sensitive in nature, these are vital to examining differences in the experiences of potentially vulnerable groups. Further, parents, workers and home-based providers are asked about experiences with discrimination or refusal of care, which may also be difficult for some respondents to answer, but these items have been prioritized by ACF and experts in the field.
Last, the home-based provider questionnaire may raise additional concerns about disclosure, such as individuals without full work permission in the U.S., or providing ECE services without full compliance with licensing, health and safety violations, subsidy participation, or other requirements. The questionnaire, therefore, very intentionally avoids any reference to such issues as visa status or licensing status. We view it as essential in gaining cooperation and respondents’ trust to be able to assure them that no questions will be asked on these potentially sensitive topics. Visa status and licensing status are not critical to the research questions for the study.
As with all the data collected on this study, individual responses will never be shared outside of the project team. Responses to sensitive questions will be combined across respondents of the survey.
Each of the NSECE instruments has different administration times: 60 minutes for the household instrument, 20 minutes for unlisted home-based providers and 40 for listed home-based providers completing the home-based provider instrument, 45 minutes for the center-based provider instrument, and 20 minutes for the workforce (classroom staff) instrument. Because there is a high ineligibility rate across three of the NSECE samples, the project employs a screener to determine eligibility for three of the four instruments. The burden estimates below use 2019 NSECE screener, eligibility, and interview completion rates to estimate numbers of screener and interview completes for the household survey, home-based provider survey for listed providers, and the center-based provider survey.
We expect data collection to take eight months.
The average hourly wage information includes estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The wage rate for the household survey is the median hourly wage for all occupations ($22.00)1. The wage rate for the center-based provider and listed home-based provider survey is the median hourly wage for 11-9031 Education Administrators, Preschool and Child Care Center/Program ($22.75)3. The wage rate for unlisted home-based providers and center-based workforce (classroom staff) members is the median hourly wage for 39-9011 Childcare Workers ($13.22)4.
Exhibit 2. Estimated Annualized Burden and Cost to Respondents
Instrument |
No. of Respondents (total over request period) |
No. of Responses per Respondent (total over request period) |
Avg. Burden per Response (in hours) |
Total/ Annual Burden (in hours) |
Average Hourly Wage Rate |
Total Annual Respondent Cost |
2024 NSECE Household Screener |
62,758 |
1 |
.1 |
6,276 |
$22.00 |
|
2024 NSECE Household Questionnaire |
10,000 |
1 |
1 |
10,000 |
$22.00 |
|
2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Screener (listed home-based providers) |
2,064 |
1 |
.03 |
62 |
$22.75 |
|
2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire (listed home-based providers) |
4,360 |
1 |
.67 |
2,921 |
$22.75 |
$66,453 |
2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire (unlisted home-based providers) |
1,158 |
1 |
.33 |
382 |
$13.22 |
|
2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Screener |
10,050 |
1 |
.1 |
1,005 |
$22.75 |
|
2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire |
8,392 |
1 |
.75 |
6,294 |
$22.75 |
|
Workforce (Classroom Staff) Questionnaire |
7,418 |
1 |
.33 |
2,448 |
$13.22 |
|
Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours |
29,388 |
|
||||
Consistent with 2019 NSECE, honoraria will be provided directly to participants as compensation for their time participating in their professional capacity in the center- and home-based provider and workforce (classroom staff) surveys. Honoraria are “payments given to professional individuals or institutions for services for which fees are not legally or traditionally required in order to secure their participation,” (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Office of Management and Budget, 2016). Based on OMB guidance, honoraria is the term most appropriate for payments to schools, teachers, and administrators, and is usually paid after participation (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Office of Management and Budget, 2016). Honoraria values will vary for each sample group based on the relative burden placed on each sample for completing each questionnaire. Exhibit 3 below summarizes these differences.
Exhibit 3. Proposed Honoraria Models for 2024 NSECE
Sample |
Survey |
Post-paid Honorarium Value 5 |
Estimated 2024 Questionnaire Completion Time (hours) |
Average hourly wage rate |
Center-based provider |
Center-based Provider Survey |
$25 (prior to July 2024) $50 (beginning July 2024) |
0.75 |
$22.75/hour |
Listed home-based provider |
Home-based Provider Survey |
$20 |
0.67 |
$22.75/hour |
Unlisted home-based provider |
$15 |
0.33 |
$13.22/hour |
|
Workforce (classroom staff) |
Workforce (Classroom Staff) Survey |
$10 (prior to July 2024) $20 (beginning July 2024) |
0.33 |
Note: Estimated hourly wage rate from BLS as indicated for Exhibit 2.
Exhibit 4. Comparison between 2019 NSECE and 2024 NSECE Honoraria Models
Sample |
Survey |
2024 Proposed Post-paid Honorarium Value |
|
Center-based provider |
Center-based Provider Survey |
$20 |
$25 |
Listed home-based provider |
Home-based Provider Survey |
$15 |
$20 |
Unlisted home-based provider |
$10 |
$15 |
|
Workforce (classroom staff) |
Workforce (Classroom Staff) Survey |
$10 |
Exhibit 4 compares the 2019 (actual) and 2024 (proposed) NSECE post-paid honoraria. The center-based provider honorarium value is based on the average hourly rate for ECE administrators and is set at $25 factoring the expected increase in hourly wage rate in 2024. This respondent is often a center director or other administrator. In 2012, respondents received $35 for web completion of the center-based provider interview ($20 for interview-administered completion). The reduced payment is likely one factor in the lower overall completion rates for the center-based provider survey in 2019 compared with 2012.
Although there is some diversity among listed home-based providers, the majority own and operate childcare programs and face similar challenges to the center-based providers in reporting administrative data. As a result, the value of the honorarium for this sample is set at $20 for completion of a slightly shorter questionnaire, also anticipating some increase in wages from 2019 to 2024.
In contrast, the honorarium value for unlisted home-based providers, is set to $15 for a questionnaire that is on average shorter than the one administered to listed home-based providers. A contribution of the 2012 and 2019 NSECE has been to reveal that a large fraction of the nation’s paid family child care providers are unlisted home-based providers; these individuals are asked to complete reporting tasks of similar complexity to the listed home-based providers and center directors.
The overall workforce (classroom staff) sample honorarium is less than the amount offered for the two provider surveys, but the classroom staff questionnaire is less complex and is based on the lower wages of classroom workers relative to classroom directors. A $10 honorarium was used in the 2019 NSECE and the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up. Furthermore, the $10 honorarium aligns with the other studies of similar populations that have found a similar honorarium to be beneficial for recruitment in terms of burden. This includes the Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education Project (ECE-ICHQ) (0970-0499), which offered $10 for center-based provider staff who completed a web questionnaire of about ten minutes in length.
We are proposing increases to the honoraria to be paid to respondents completing the center-based provider and workforce (classroom staff) interviews as of July 2024 (on approval). Although the cumulative time spent completing the interview aligns with the estimated burden, it is evident that center-based provider respondents are working to complete the effort while juggling other work responsibilities likely due to the demands on their time and attention in the early care and education programs. As such, they are having to complete the interview in multiple sessions, which can be a deterrent for completion, particularly if not acknowledged in a suitable manner. Administrative data about the surveys completed so far indicate that 50% of completed center-based provider interviews are requiring at least two sessions, with 25% requiring at least four sessions. To date, more than half of respondents who have begun the interview have failed to complete it. To more accurately acknowledge the efforts required by respondents to complete the center-based provider interview, we propose to increase the honorarium for completion of the center-based provider interview to $50. The increased honorarium will contribute to efforts to complete the necessary number of center-based provider interviews to support the range of analyses planned for the 2024 NSECE, and ensure that data are collected not just from centers where directors are able to make the time to complete the interview, but also from directors who may find it more challenging to make the time and provide the requested information. The proposed honorarium for respondents to the center-based provider interview is similar in real value to the $35 respondents received in 2012 for completing that interview by web. [The inflation-adjusted equivalent of $35 in January 2012 is $48.50 in May 2024.]
Members of the center-based workforce are a particular population of interest for the 2024 NSECE. Given high rates of turnover among this population, prompt completion of the interview facilitates our ability to obtain representative data for the ECE workforce. Turnover is especially high during the summer, as workers may transition from one ECE setting to another (or out of ECE). Interest in understanding varying state-level workforce interventions also means that adequate state-level sample sizes will allow for the 2024 NSECE to advance understanding of workforce-focused policy innovation. We propose to pay a $20 honorarium to individuals completing the workforce interview. More than 90 percent of workforce respondents are requiring at least two sessions to complete the interview. The amount proposed is based on the workforce interview being less than half the length of the center-based provider interview.
The increased honoraria would supplement other efforts to increase response rates that we are implementing, which include experimenting with express mail rather than postal mail, variation in formatting and timing of emails, sending postcards or making phone calls in advance of in-person visits to improve effectiveness of the visits, among other activities.
These costs are based on actuals from the 2019 NSECE data collection. Revised costs account for updated sample sizes, new staff and inflation. Cost estimates include labor and other direct costs associated with each cost category.
Cost Category |
Y1 |
Y2 |
Y3 |
Y4 |
Y5 |
Total Estimated Costs |
Sampling and Screening |
170,098 |
1,002,356 |
916,940 |
|
|
|
Field Work and IT programming |
79,743 |
2,781,020 |
25,697,556 |
370,878 |
12,823 |
28,942,020 |
Analysis |
132,327 |
30,965 |
340,605 |
1,215,829 |
1,048,409 |
2,768,135 |
Publications/Dissemination |
160,255 |
24,382 |
42,359 |
485,760 |
1,338,315 |
|
Annual Costs |
542,423 |
3,838,723 |
26,997,460 |
2,072,467 |
2,399,547 |
35,850,620 |
This request is for a new round of data collection for the NSECE. All previously approved data collection under 0970-0391 was completed.
Data collection for the 2024 NSECE is slated to begin in October 2023, pending OMB approval. The proposed time schedule for data collection is listed in Exhibit 5 below:
Exhibit 5. Proposed Data Collection Time Schedule
Activity |
Date |
Pre-field Data Collection |
Late October 2023 – December 2023 |
Field Data Collection |
December 2023 – November 2024 |
Data Processing and Analysis |
November 2023 – December 2025 |
Data files available for public use |
In addition, the 2024 NSECE team will prepare comprehensive reports on the utilization and supply of ECE, specifically seven research briefs, four methodological briefs, and seven fact sheets that address the research questions mentioned above. The project team will also produce public- and restricted-use data files, with relevant documentation, which will be made available to other researchers to fully explore the range of issues of policy and programmatic importance. These data will have geographic and other identifiers to allow for linkage to other information (e.g., Census Bureau data, policy variables).
No exceptions are necessary for this information collection.
Instrument 1 2024 NSECE Household Screener and Questionnaire
Instrument 1S 2024 NSECE Household Screener and Questionnaire (Spanish)
Instrument 2 2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire
Instrument 2S 2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire (Spanish)
Instrument 3 2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire
Instrument 3S 2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Screener and Questionnaire (Spanish)
Instrument 4 2024 NSECE Workforce (Classroom Staff) Questionnaire
Instrument 4S 2024 NSECE Workforce (Classroom Staff) Questionnaire (Spanish)
Appendix A 2024 NSECE Household Survey Contact Materials
Appendix A-S 2024 NSECE Household Survey Contact Materials (Spanish)
Appendix B 2024 NSECE Household Questionnaire Items - Overview and Comparison
Appendix C 2024 NSECE Unlisted Home-based Provider Survey Contact Materials
Appendix C-S 2024 NSECE Unlisted Home-based Provider Survey Contact Materials (Spanish)
Appendix D 2024 NSECE Listed Home-based Provider Survey Contact Materials
Appendix D-S 2024 NSECE Listed Home-based Provider Survey Contact Materials (Spanish)
Appendix E 2024 NSECE Home-based Provider Questionnaire Items - Overview and Comparison
Appendix F 2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Survey Contact Materials
Appendix F-S 2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Survey Contact Materials (Spanish)
Appendix G 2024 NSECE Center-based Provider Questionnaire Items - Overview and Comparison
Appendix H 2024 NSECE Workforce (Classroom Staff) Survey Respondent Contact Materials
Appendix H-S 2024 NSECE Workforce (Classroom Staff) Survey Respondent Contact Materials (Spanish)
Appendix I 2024 NSECE Workforce (Classroom Staff) Questionnaire Items - Overview and Comparison
Appendix J 2024 NSECE Field Materials for Contacting Respondents
Appendix J-S 2024 NSECE Field Materials for Contacting Respondents (Spanish)
Appendix K 2024 NSECE General Research Review Board Materials
Appendix L 2024 NSECE Research Questions
Appendix M 2024 NSECE Public Comment
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1 All previous NSECE data collections were approved under this OMB number (OMB #0970-0391).
2 Examples of sensitive topics include (but not limited to): social security number; sex behavior and attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating and demeaning behavior; critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close relationships, e.g., family, pupil-teacher, employee-supervisor; mental and psychological problems potentially embarrassing to respondents; religion and indicators of religion; community activities which indicate political affiliation and attitudes; legally recognized privileged and analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians and ministers; records describing how an individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment; receipt of economic assistance from the government (e.g., unemployment or WIC or SNAP); immigration/citizenship status.
31https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000
2 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes119031.htm
43 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes399011.htm
5 The proposed change to the honorarium value will be implemented upon OMB approval of the July 2024 change request.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Erika Greenia |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2024-07-21 |