July 25 -- The Census Bureau invites comments to OMB by August 24, 2023 on the proposed data collection entitled the National Survey of Children's Health Longitudinal Cohort (NSCH-LC).
Sponsored primarily by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau (HRSA MCHB), the National Survey of Children’s Health – Longitudinal Cohort (NSCH-LC) is designed to produce unique data on the physical and emotional health of children and young adults 3- to 24-years-old in the United States with a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The NSCH-LC will follow-up with prior respondents of the annual National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) and will collect information related to the health and well-being of children, young adults, and their families, including access to and use of health care, family interactions, mental health, school, after-school experiences, and family economic circumstances. The goal of the NSCH-LC is to provide HRSA MCHB, other government agencies, and other data users with the necessary data to assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. children, young adults, and their families, to illuminate key risk and protective factors for this cohort, and to identify gaps in health care and education during this period.
There is a great need for data to assess the effects of the COVID–19 pandemic on U.S. children, young adults, and their families. The proposed content collected on the National Survey of Children's Health—Longitudinal Cohort (NSCH–LC) will aid in illuminating key risk and protective factors for this cohort and help to identify gaps in health care and education during this period.
Data will be collected using one of two modes. The first mode is an English web instrument (Centurion) survey. The web instrument first verifies that the survey has arrived at the correct address. The rest of the instrument will collect a roster of children and young adults then ask age-based questions about a specific focal child or young adult. The second mode is a mailout/mailback of a self-administered paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI) English or Spanish age-based screener and topical questionnaires.
The NSCH–LC sample will consist of 60,000 households that responded previously to the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) annual survey. Based on incentive use evaluation from many prior cycles of the NSCH annual survey, including a pre-paid unconditional cash incentive has proven to be a cost-effective intervention for increasing survey response and reducing nonresponse bias. Therefore, HRSA MCHB would like to ensure each sampled household is eligible for a $5 cash incentive.
The U.S. Census Bureau will conduct the NSCH-LC on the behalf of the HRSA MCHB under Title 13, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 8(b) (13 U.S.C. § 8(b)), which allows the Census Bureau to conduct surveys on behalf of other agencies. Section 501(a)(2) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. § 701) allows HRSA MCHB to collect information for the purpose of understanding the health and well-being of children in the United States.
There are also two separate partner agreements. The first partner agreement is with the HHS Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (CDC/NCBDDD) that supports content related to developmental screenings in early childhood. This CDC/NCBDDD support is needed to ensure adequate collection of data related to developmental screening in the NSCH-LC and is authorized under the Public Health Service Act, Section 301, 42 U.S.C. § 241. The second partner agreement is with the HHS National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) that will support a field follow up effort during data collection to improve the survey’s overall response rate and reduce the potential for bias in attrition and is authorized under the Public Health Service Act, Section 301, 42 U.S.C. § 242(b).
This submission requests approval for a new OMB control number 0607-XXXX and covers the first annual production fielding of the NSCH-LC. The NSCH-LC is built from similar frameworks used for the NSCH which has been fielded annually in a production format since 2016.
Plans for the first production cycle of the NSCH-LC will offer two different self-administered modes of data collection, a Web instrument and a paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI) instrument. Both modes of data collection will be further divided into age-based topical questionnaires. To support the full age range of NSCH-LC sampled children and young adults under the age of 24, the questionnaire age splits will be as follows: LC1/LC1-S is for children 3- to 5-years-old, the LC2_3/LC2_3-S is for children 6- to 17-years-old, and the LC4/LC4-S is for young adults 18- to 24-years-old.
The target response rate for this survey is 75 percent. If response rates are lower than anticipated during the data collection window, adaptive mailing strategies such as slightly modified packaging, envelopes and/or incentives may be employed at the discretion of the sponsor when funding allows. Burden hour estimates would not be affected by these modified strategies.
The NSCH annual is the only survey of its kind that collects information on factors related to the health and well-being of children at the state and national level. This includes access to and quality of health care, family interactions, parental health, school and out-of-school experiences, and neighborhood characteristics. Data from the NSCH are used to measure progress on national performance and outcome measures under the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant. This information further informs state-level planning and program development, federal policy and program development, and general scientific research.
Since the NSCH annual is the only survey of its kind to collect information on these factors related to the health and well-being of children at the state and national level, the NSCH-LC data would be able to provide some key insight into the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on these children or young adults and their families. More specifically, this data could be used to identify how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their physical health, mental health, and overall development as well as determine which groups of children were especially vulnerable. Additionally, data from this collection could help answer questions about the role childcare and school disruptions, parental mental health, access to health care services, parental employment changes, and family economic and housing circumstances played in these effects. It is therefore critical that the U.S. Census Bureau conducts this survey on behalf of the HRSA MCHB.
NCHS (HRSA)
https://mchb.hrsa.gov/data-research/national-survey-childrens-health
NCHS (Census)
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nsch.html
Census submission to OMB:
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=202307-0607-001 Click on IC List for questionnaire, View Supporting Statement for technical documentation. Submit comments through this site.
FR notice inviting public comment:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-15685
For AEA members wishing to submit comments, "A Primer on How to Respond to Calls for Comment on Federal Data Collections" is available at
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=5806