National Household Education Survey 

2016 (NHES:2016)

Full-scale Data Collection

OMB# 1850-0768 v.11

Part A

April 2015

Revised in June 2015
ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

JUSTIFICATION ...................................................................................................................... 1

A.1 Circumstances Necessitating Collection of Information........................................... 1

A.2 Purposes and Uses of the Data .................................................................................. 1

A.3 Use of Improved Information Technology................................................................ 5

A.4 Efforts to Identify Duplication .................................................................................. 6

A.5 Collection of Data from Small Businesses................................................................ 6

A.6 Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection ...................................................... 7

A.7 Special Circumstances of Data Collection ................................................................ 7

A.8 Consultations Outside the Agency ............................................................................ 7

A.9 Payments to Respondents.......................................................................................... 9

A.10 Assurance of Confidentiality..................................................................................... 11

A.11 Sensitive Questions ................................................................................................... 11

A.12 Estimated Response Burden...................................................................................... 13

A.13 Cost to Respondents.................................................................................................. 13

A.14 Cost to the Federal Government................................................................................ 13

A.15 Reasons for Program Changes................................................................................... 14

A.16 Publication Plans and Project Schedule..................................................................... 14

A.17 Approval to Not Display the Expiration Date for OMB Approval ........................... 14

A.18 Exceptions to the Certification Statement ................................................................. 14

List of Tables

Table

1 Incentive amounts and sample sizes for targeted incentive experiment.................... 11

2 Estimated response burden for NHES:2016.............................................................. 13

List of Exhibits

Exhibit

1 Surveys conducted under the National Household Education Surveys Program, by 

years administered: 1991 through 2012..................................................................... 3

2 NHES:2016 schedule of major activities................................................................... 14
1

JUSTIFICATION

NHES Program - Request for Clearance

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection program of the National Center for 

Education Statistics (NCES) designed to provide descriptive data on the education activities of the U.S. population,

with an emphasis on topics that are appropriate for household surveys rather than institutional surveys. Such topics 

have covered a wide range of issues, including early childhood care and education, children’s readiness for school, 

parents’ perceptions of school safety and discipline, before- and after-school activities of school-age children, 

participation in adult and career education, parents’ involvement in their children’s education, school choice, 

homeschooling, and civic involvement. NCES received approval in September 2014 to conduct the full-scale 

NHES in 2015 (OMB# 1850-0768 v. 10) but decided to delay data collection until 2016 to further refine the 

surveys and data collection processes and to better manage budget constraints. This request is to conduct 

NHES:2016 full scale data collection, as described in this submission.

A.1 Circumstances Necessitating Collection of Information

The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA 2002: 20 U.S. Code § 9543) defines the legislative mission of 

NCES to collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data related to education in the United States and in 

other nations. The NHES is specifically designed to support this mission by providing a means to investigate 

education issues that cannot be adequately studied through the Center’s institution-based data collection efforts. For 

example, some school-age children are homeschooled rather than attending a public or private school. There is no 

available sample frame that includes all of the homeschooling students across the United States. Likewise, although 

attaining a postsecondary credential has become increasingly important for securing opportunities to get high-return 

jobs in the United States in the 21st century, NCES has traditionally only collected data on postsecondary 

certificates and degrees awarded through credit-bearing instruction in institutions of higher education that 

participate in Title IV federal student aid programs. These comprise only a portion of the subbaccalaureate 

education and training that American adults seek and complete in order to learn the skills they need for finding and 

keeping good-paying jobs.

It is efficient and economical to interview parents about their children’s participation in child care programs and 

family participation in school and other education activities through a household-based approach rather than 

incurring the cost and nonresponse involved in enlisting schools, obtaining lists of parents, and sampling parents 

from those lists. Similarly, it is also most efficient to interview adults through a household-based approach rather 

than trying to obtain lists from a myriad of private credential-awarding bodies. Also, the household approach allows 

for inclusion of adults who do not participate in training or have a credential, providing a point of comparison.

Repeating the NHES:2012 child surveys will provide the first trend data available under the new NHES design. 

Tracking trends in education topics on a regular, repeating basis is a key research goal of the NHES program. 

Adding the adult education component will provide the first publicly available adult education data from the NHES 

in over a decade, and provide detailed data about previously under measured non-degree credentials.

A.2 Purposes and Uses of the Data

The NHES:2016 data collection will provide policymakers and researchers with data on early childhood education, 

parent and family involvement in education, homeschooling, and adult training and education that are not available 

elsewhere. Researchers nationwide rely on NHES data for important policy analyses. Survey data from the NHES 

have been used for a large number of descriptive and analytic reports and articles, including NCES education 

indicators, reports, and statistical abstracts; publications of other Federal agencies; policy analyses; theses and 

dissertations; conference papers; and journal articles. A list of NHES publications issued by NCES can be found on 

the NHES website, http://nces.ed.gov/nhes.

NHES Program

NHES uses a two-stage design in which sampled households complete a screener questionnaire to enumerate 

household members and their key characteristics. Within-household sampling from the screener data determines 

which household member receives which topical survey. NHES typically fields 2 to 3 topical surveys at a time, 

although the number has varied across its administrations. Surveys are administered in English and in Spanish. Data 

from the NHES are used to provide national cross-sectional estimates on populations of special interest to education 

researchers and policymakers.
2

Beginning in 1991, NHES was administered approximately every other year as a landline random-digit-dial (RDD) 

survey. During a period of declining response rates in all RDD surveys, NCES decided to conduct a series of field 

tests to determine if a change to self-administered mailed questionnaires would improve response rates. A 

feasibility test of the new design was conducted in 2009 followed by a field test in 2011. The field test results 

helped to inform the final design of a full-scale NHES collection in 2012 (OMB# 1850-0768 v.9), which included 

the Early Childhood Program Participation (ECPP), the Parent and Family Involvement in Education-Enrolled

(PFI-E), and the Parent and Family Involvement in Education-Homeschooled (PFI-H) surveys.

ATES Development

During the same period of time, NCES began supporting developmental work on new questionnaire items for 

federal household surveys on work-related education, training, and credentials for adults and out-of-school youth. 

The Interagency Working Group on Expanded Measures of Enrollment and Attainment (GEMEnA) is a

collaboration among federal statistical agencies established by the OMB Office of Statistical and Science Policy, 

the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Under Secretary of Education to improve federal household statistics on 

the attainment of non-degree credentials such as industry-recognized certifications, occupational licenses, and 

educational certificates. In 2012, GEMEnA’s commission expanded to include the development of new and revised 

measures of enrollment or participation in education and training for work. One of GEMEnA’s roles is to guide 

NCES’s development of a new household survey on these topics to support research and policy analysis. To 

achieve this purpose, NCES conducted focus groups, cognitive interviews, and two pilot studies (OMB# 1850-

0803), first a two-stage telephone survey and then a single-stage self-administered mail survey. Detailed 

information and reports from these activities can be found at nces.ed.gov/surveys/gemena.

In 2016, the NHES will field the first full-scale administration of the Adult Training and Education Survey (ATES), 

which will provide new measures of adults’ educational and occupational credentials, including counts of (1) adults 

who have an industry-recognized certification or occupational license, including the number of such credentials, the 

type of work they are for, their perceived labor market value, and the role of education in preparing for them; (2) 

adults who have educational certificates, including the subject field of the certificate, its perceived labor market 

value, and its role in preparing for occupational credentialing; and (3) adults who have completed an initial work 

experience program (such as an apprenticeship or internship), including characteristics of the program and its 

perceived labor market value.

NHES Feasibility Study

One of NCES’s goals from the beginning of the GEMEnA project was to determine the feasibility of eventually 

incorporating a survey of adults back into the NHES. In 2014, NCES conducted a Feasibility Study testing the 

integration of an adult topical survey into NHES mail operations and processing (OMB# 1850-0803). The NHES

Feasibility Study (NHES-FS) included several experiments to inform the final design of the 2016 full-scale NHES. 

Using one household survey platform for both child and adult surveys provides greater efficiency in the data 

collection and reduces overall national burden by maximizing the use of a single household sample draw. Before 

adding an adult survey back into the NHES it was important to test the feasibility of using a mail survey to screen 

households for both adults and children, and to test different approaches to collecting topical data from households 

(e.g., sampling either an adult or a child from the same household for topical follow up compared to sampling both 

and adult and a child for follow up). The NHES-FS also included several other experiments to test approaches 

aimed toward decreasing unit and item nonresponse. The results of these experiments have informed the design of 

the NHES:2016.

NHES Cognitive Interviews

NCES conducted a number of rounds of cognitive interviews from December of 2014 through June of 2015 (listed 

below) that lead to changes designed to improve respondents’ understanding of the language used in the letters, 

postcards, and survey items. The results of these cognitive interviews informed the development of the documents 

in this submission and are presented in Appendix 4.

 Phase 1 Spanish language interviews for respondent contact materials and screener instrument—OMB #1850-0803 v.128

 Phase 2 Spanish language interviews for topical questionnaires –OMB #1850-0803 v.131

 Phase 3 Spanish and English interviews on contact materials for web experiment –OMB #1850-0803 v. 136

 PFI and ECPP interviews –OMB #1850-0803 v.121

 ATES interviews—OMB #1850-0803 v.127
3

Overview of NHES:2016 Target population

The NHES:2016 will include the ATES, the PFI-E, the PFI-H, and the ECPP. Adults ages 16 to 65 who are not 

enrolled in or homeschooled for grade 12 or below will be eligible for the ATES topical survey, and children from 

birth through 12th grade who are ages 20 or younger will be eligible for the child-focused surveys. The PFI-E 

samples children and youth ages 20 or younger enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade, while the PFI-H targets 

families of children and youth ages 20 or younger homeschooled for the equivalent of kindergarten through 12th

grade. The ECPP samples children ages 6 or younger who are not yet enrolled in kindergarten. Adults 

knowledgeable about the care and education of the sampled children respond to the surveys about children, whereas 

sampled adults answer ATES surveys about themselves.

This submission includes a number of letters and postcards for each stage of the study tailored for the screener 

instrument and each topical survey. It also includes respondent materials designed for a planned web survey 

experiment described in the section entitled NHES:2016 Experiments. All English-language respondent contact 

materials are provided in Appendix 1 and all English- and Spanish-language mail survey materials are provided in 

Appendix 2. Appendix 2 also includes a table describing differences between the mail surveys and the web surveys.

NHES:2016 Screener Instrument

The household screener instrument was revised from the 2012 NHES to include a complete listing of all household 

members rather than just of children in the household. The response rates for a 5-person child-only screener and a 

10-person all household member screener were found to be comparable in a small experiment conducted in 

conjunction with an ATES pilot test in 2013. The NHES-FS used the 10-person screener as part of its goal to 

evaluate the procedures needed to include an adult-focused survey in NHES and included an experiment comparing 

response rate differences between a screener that asked for age measured in years versus a screener that asked for 

age measured as year and month of birth. Based on the results of this experiment, NHES:2016 will use the screener 

that asks for age as year and month of birth. English and Spanish versions of the screener are shown in Appendix 2.

NHES:2016 Topical Surveys

As shown in Exhibit 1, each administration of the NHES has included more than one topical survey. The 

NHES:2016 will include one adult-focused survey (ATES) and three child-focused topical surveys (PFI-E, PFI-H,

and ECPP). The surveys are shown in Appendix 2. The planned NHES:2016 administration of the PFI and ECPP 

surveys is a repeat of the child-focused topics administered for the first time in mail survey mode as part of 

NHES:2012. NCES decided to repeat these surveys in 2016 to establish the first trend data for the newly-designed 

NHES. Tracking changes in the population over time is a key research goal of the NHES program. To develop 

ATES content, NCES under the guidance of GEMEnA has been developing and testing new survey items since 

2009, including conducting expert review, focus groups, cognitive tests and pilot tests. English and Spanish 

versions of the PFI-E, PFI-H, ECPP, and ATES are shown in Appendix 2.

Exhibit 1. Topical surveys conducted under the National Household Education Surveys Program, by

years administered: 1991–2012

Topical survey

NHES survey administration

1991 1993 1995 1996 199912001 2003 2005 2007 2012

Early childhood education/program participation √ √ √ √ √ √

Adult education √ √ √ √ √ √

School readiness √ √ √

School safety and discipline √

Parent and family involvement in education √ √ √ √ √

Homeschooling √ √ √ √

Civic involvement √ √

After-school programs and activities √

2

√ √

3

√

Household library use √

1 The NHES:1999 was a special end-of-decade administration that measured key indicators from the surveys fielded during the 1990s.

2 The After-School Programs and Activities Survey of the NHES:1995 only asked about children in first through third grades.

3 The After-School Programs and Activities Survey of the NHES:2001 also included items on before-school programs.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Household Education Surveys Program 

(NHES), 1991–2012.
4

The Parent and Family Involvement in Education Surveys (PFI)

The PFI, previously conducted in 1996, 2003, 2007, and 2012, surveys families of children and youth enrolled in 

kindergarten through 12th grade or homeschooled for these grades, with an age limit of 20 years, and addresses 

specific ways that families are involved in their children’s school; school practices to involve and support families; 

involvement with children’s homework; and involvement in education activities outside of school. Parents of 

homeschoolers are asked about their reasons for choosing homeschooling and resources they used in 

homeschooling. Information about child, parent, and household characteristics is also collected. To minimize 

response burden and potential respondent confusion, both enrolled and homeschool versions of the PFI 

questionnaire were created for self administration. This submission includes both PFI-E and PFI-H instruments.

The Early Childhood Program Participation Survey (ECPP)

The ECPP, previously conducted in 1991, 1995, 2001, 2005, and 2012, surveys families of children ages 6 or 

younger who are not yet enrolled in kindergarten and provides estimates of children’s participation in care by 

relatives and non-relatives in private homes and in center-based daycare or preschool programs (including Head 

Start and Early Head Start). Additional topics addressed in ECPP interviews have included family learning 

activities; out-of-pocket expenses for nonparental care; continuity of care; factors related to parental selection of 

care; parents’ perceptions of care quality; child health and disability; and child, parent, and household 

characteristics.

The Adult Training and Education Survey (ATES)

ATES provides means to investigate issues related to adults’ education, training, and credentials that cannot be 

adequately studied through the Center’s institution-based data collection efforts. It targets non-institutionalized 

adults in the United States ages 16 to 65 not enrolled at grade 12 or below. The ATES will collect information on 

educational attainment, prevalence and characteristics of certifications and licenses and their holders, prevalence 

and characteristics of educational certificates and certificate holders, and completion and key characteristics of 

work experience programs such as apprenticeships and internships. It will also collect detailed employment and 

background information.

NHES:2016 Experiments

Web Experiment

NCES is planning an experiment as part of NHES:2016 to evaluate response rates for a subsample of respondents 

requested to complete the screener and topical instruments over the internet. The web instruments are being 

developed using the paper and pencil versions submitted for clearance herein, with a few differences described in 

Appendix 2. This experiment will also test real-time sampling between the screener and the topical stages of data 

collection. The functionality of the web interface will permit immediate sampling of a household member for a 

topical survey, and if the screener respondent is the sampled adult respondent or the most knowledgeable adult 

about the sampled child respondent, the web instrument will allow him or her to continue immediately to the topical 

survey. The benefit of immediate sampling is that it will create the potential for respondents to complete the 

screener and topical surveys in one sitting rather than being contacted on two separate occasions to complete the 

survey; this should increase topical response rates while reducing cost and burden. At any stage during the web 

experiment, respondents will be able to call the Census Bureau to receive a paper and pencil version of the survey. 

In addition, beginning at the point of the third nonresponse follow up mailing for both the screener and the topical 

surveys, sampled web households that have not yet responded will automatically receive a paper and pencil version 

of the survey and continue with paper and pencil follow-up thereafter.

From the original sample of 206,000 households, 35,000 will be allocated to the web experiment. The experiment is 

being designed to measure 1) overall web screener and web topical response rates, 2) demographic characteristics 

of web respondents versus pencil and paper respondents in the web sample, 3) the number and type of respondents 

who try to answer the survey on a smart phone, 4) the number of breakoffs at the screener and topical stages, and 5) 

the number of screener respondents with a sampled child in their household who indicated that they are not the 

most knowledgeable about the care and education of the sampled child. A random half of the web respondents will 

be asked for an email address for nonresponse followup to evaluate whether that request leads to breakoffs. With 80 

percent power and a significance level of 0.05, the treatment group size of 35,000 will allow a minimum detectible 

difference in screener response rates between the web treatment group and the paper treatment group of 
5

approximately 1 percentage point. At the topical level, response rate differences of 3.5 percentage points or greater 

will be detectible.

Targeted Incentive Experiment

Preliminary analysis of an experiment in the NHES-FS comparing no incentive to a $5 incentive suggests that there 

are certain types of households for which the incentive had a relatively limited impact on response rates. This 

means that NCES can potentially reduce operational costs without introducing bias by targeting specific households 

with a smaller incentive. On the other end of the spectrum, there are certain households that are less likely to 

respond. The Total Survey Error1paradigm developed by Paul Biemer indicates that nonresponse bias should be 

reduced to enhance the quality of resulting survey estimates; therefore, NCES could potentially increase the quality 

of survey estimates by encouraging sampled households who may not otherwise do so to respond by offering a 

larger incentive amount. For NHES:2016, NCES plans to create a response propensity model using data from the 

NHES-FS, the address-based sample frame, and Census data to identify suitable households to target with a smaller 

or larger incentive. The initial plans for the targeted incentive experiment are described in section A.9 of this 

document. An outside expert has suggested conducting a more sophisticated analysis to refine these plans prior to 

determining cut points and incentive dollar amounts. If this additional analysis results in a change to the proposed 

incentive structure, NCES will submit a change request for approval.

Seeded Sample of Certificate Holders

As part of its ongoing effort to evaluate new survey measures of non-degree credentials, the NHES:2016 will 

include a seeded sample of 1,000 known holders of educational certificates. This experiment will follow the model 

successfully used in the ATES Pilot Study of 2010, NATES:2013, and NHES:FS of including a small opportunity 

sample of credential holders to help evaluate the characteristics of “true” credentials and to assess the extent of 

false negative responses to the main certificate survey item. These cases will only receive the ATES topical 

survey—not the screener—and are not included in the main national sample of 206,000 screener cases for 

operations, weighting, or analysis.

A.3 Use of Improved Information Technology

The paper and pencil instruments in the NHES:2016 will be collected for NCES by the Census Bureau using three

complementary survey systems - (1) Amgraf One Form Plus, (2) Docuprint, and (3) integrated Computer Assisted 

Data Entry (iCADE), chosen for their efficiency and accuracy in the data collection process.

 Forms Design. Questionnaires will be created using Amgraf One Form Plus. Completed hardcopy forms can 

be processed by iCADE to capture responses through optical mark recognition (OMR) and keying from image 

(KFI). Questionnaires will be printed, trimmed, and stitched through an in-house print on-demand process 

using a Docuprint system which allows personalization of some survey items. The data from the 

questionnaires will be captured by the iCADE technology/software, which automatically extracts all check 

box entries (OMR) and captures and displays an image of all other entries to an operator for KFI.

 Image Preprocessing. iCADE applies image preprocessing to the forms in their image format in order to 

correct any skewing at the time of scanning, and the iCADE software performs registration to align the 

individual questionnaire page template with the appropriate scanned image. The scanner despeckles the image 

to remove unwanted pixels.

 Data Capture. iCADE reads the form image files, checks the presence of data, processes all check box fields 

through OMR, and presents an image of the handwritten fields to an operator for KFI.

 Verification. Extracted KFI data are subject to 100% field validation according to project specifications. If a 

data value violates validation rules, the value is flagged for review by verifiers who interactively review the 

images and the corresponding extracted data, and resolve validation errors.

 Archiving. Images will be scanned and archived to magnetic storage located on a secured server in case they 

are needed later. This eliminates the need to save paper copies of the completed questionnaires.

The NHES:2016 web experiment described in section A.2 will be conducted to determine whether respondents 

access and respond to a web-based screener instrument followed by a web-based topical survey. The web-based 

 

1 Biemer, P. (2010). Total Survey Error: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation. Public Opinion Quarterly, 74 (5): 817-848.
6

instruments are designed to minimize respondent burden by eliminating the cumbersome skip patterns required in 

the pencil and paper instruments. The instruments will be securely hosted on the NCES server and regular updates 

on incomplete cases will be securely transmitted to the Census Bureau for nonresponse follow up.

A.4 Efforts to Identify Duplication

PFI and ECPP

Population: Most other surveys do not address the topics covered in NHES for the populations of interest. For 

example, the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) focuses on children in Head Start, whereas 

all children who have not yet started kindergarten are of interest in the ECPP Survey. Likewise, the National 

Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) focuses primarily on low income children and their program 

participation. The National Survey of Parents of Public School Students and Survey of Family and School 

Partnerships in Public Schools focus on parents of children in public schools. Those whose children attend private 

schools or are homeschooled are not represented. Some studies, such as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 

Birth Cohort (ECLS-B); the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K); and 

the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011) focus on single-year 

cohorts that are followed over time and therefore do not provide nationally representative data on different age 

groups. The NHES surveys are designed to complement these longitudinal collections with more frequent and more 

inclusive cross-sectional data.

Survey Content: Extant studies are limited in the content that they include relative to the goals of the NHES 

surveys. Studies such as the National Survey of America’s Families and the National Study of the Changing 

Workforce collect some information on child care or program participation, but their primary emphasis is on other 

topics, and the depth of information on early care and education experiences is limited. The Head Start FACES 

project collects information on Head Start program participation and some family measures, but does not account 

for all nonparental care and programs. The Current Population Survey October Education Supplement is limited to 

a relatively small number of items on education participation and does not address the roles that parents play in 

their children’s school, schoolwork, and home activities. Also, no nationally representative study other than the 

NHES collects detailed data on homeschooling.

Current Estimates and Measuring Change Over Time. Many of the extant surveys follow one cohort or periodic 

cohorts (e.g., the ECLS-K, Head Start FACES, NSECE) or are no longer conducted (e.g., the National Survey of 

America’s Families, Family Involvement in Education: A National Portrait). As a result, they cannot meet the 

NHES goal of providing up-to-date cross-sectional estimates and measures of change over time for all children who 

have not started kindergarten or for children in kindergarten through 12th grade, as is provided by the NHES.

ATES

Senior policy officials in the Departments of Education, Commerce, and Labor, foundations including the Gates 

Foundation and Lumina, and research organizations such as the Georgetown Center for Education and the 

Workforce have recognized that there is a lack of valid statistical information on prevalence of industry-recognized 

certifications and education certificates and have called for the development of new data sources. A series of 

meetings during the fall of 2009 launched a broad effort to begin to define and enumerate these credentials. NCES 

conducted a review of research literature and data collections since the work of a previous Interagency Committee 

in 2000, from which NCES developed a bank of existing survey items on certifications (completed 11/2009) and 

education certificates (completed 1/2010). This research found no surveys that adequately captured comprehensive 

data on the extent to which adults participate in training or non-Title IV credit bearing education and attain nondegree credentials.

Due to these limitations in extant studies and the household based sampling of NHES, NCES plans to conduct the 

PFI-E, PFI-H, ECPP, and ATES surveys under the NHES program. Appendix 3 contains a review of other surveys

that cover topics similar to those in the NHES child surveys. The review shows that there is little overlap between 

the NHES and these other surveys. Although GEMEnA’s work has resulted in the addition of survey items on 

certifications and licenses to the Current Population Survey and other federal surveys, ATES is the only one that

collects detailed information on the attainment of non-degree credentials from the general U.S. adult population.

A.5 Collection of Data from Small Businesses

Not applicable.
7

A.6 Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

This request is for clearance of the NHES:2016. Topics covered in the child-focused surveys proposed for this 

collection have been addressed in previous NHES administrations; repeating the surveys on a regular basis allows 

for analysis of trends over time. In the past, NHES has been administered on a biennial cycle. The last full NHES 

study was conducted in 2012. Rather than conduct a full scale NHES in 2014, NCES decided to field the NHES 

Feasibility Study to evaluate the procedures needed to incorporate an adult-focused survey into the mail survey 

mode. Due to funding constraints and in order to allow for developmental testing between cycles, NCES moved to 

a triennial NHES survey administration. The next full scale NHES is projected to take place in 2019. NCES 

believes that this is the maximum periodicity that will allow NHES to maintain its purpose of tracking changes in 

key education estimates over time.

A.7 Special Circumstances of Data Collection

None of the special circumstances listed in the instructions for completing the supporting statement apply to

NHES:2016.

A.8 Consultations Outside the Agency

A Technical Review Panel (TRP) comprising leading experts in survey methodology was established to provide 

input to the redesign of the NHES system. Most members of the panel met in February 2010 to discuss the 

proposed design for the field test, and their comments and suggestions led to changes reflected in this submission.

Technical Review Panel Participants and Their Affiliation at the Time of TRP Recruitment

Nancy Bates

U.S. Census Bureau

649 A. St. N.E.

Washington, DC 20002

E-mail: nancy.a.bates@census.gov

Paul Beatty

National Center for Health Statistics

Division of Health Care Statistics

3311 Toledo Road,

Hyattsville, MD 20782

E-mail: pbeatty@cdc.gov

Johnny Blair

Survey Sampling and Methodology

Abt Associates Inc.

4550 Montgomery Avenue

Bethesda, MD 20814-3343

E-mail: Johnny_Blair@AbtAssoc.com

Stephen Blumberg

National Center for Health Statistics

3311 Toledo Road

Hyattsville, MD 20782

E-mail: stephen.blumberg@cdc.hhs.gov

Mick Couper

Survey Research Center

University of Michigan

ISR, 426 Thompson Street

Ann Arbor, MI 48104

E-mail: mcouper@umich.edu

Don Dillman

Social and Economic Sciences Research Center, Professor

Washington State University

133 Wilson Hall

Pullman, WA 99164-4014

E-mail: dillman@wsu.edu

Robert Groves

Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research

University of Michigan

426 Thompson Street

Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248

E-mail: bgroves@isr.umich.edu

Scott Keeter

Pew Research Center

1615 L. St. NW. Suite 700

Washington, DC 20036

E-mail: skeeter@pewresearch.org

Kristen Olsen

Survey Research and Methodology

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

201 N. 13th St.

Lincoln, NE 68588-0241

E-mail: kolson5@unl.edu

Roger Tourangeau

Joint Program in Survey Methodology

University of Maryland

1218 LeFrak Hall, University of Maryland

College Park, MD 20742

E-mail: RTourango@survey.umd.edu
8

Gordon Willis

Division of Cancer Control / Population Sciences

National Cancer Institute

6130 Executive Blvd, MSC 7344, EPN 4005

Bethesda, MD 20892-7344

E-mail: willisg@mail.nih.gov

The content of the NHES:2016 child-focused topical surveys repeats the content developed for the NHES:2012 

administration and prior NHES administrations. As a result, the PFI and ECPP surveys reflect the cumulative input 

of many experts in the field and past NHES Technical Review Panels. In order to ensure that the ECPP and PFI 

surveys address important issues in the topical areas of interest and incorporate important emerging issues, the 

design phase of the 2012 study included consultations with experts in the substantive areas addressed in the 

surveys. These experts included persons in government agencies, academe, and research organizations.

Substantive Experts: ECPP and Their Affiliation at the Time of TRP Recruitment

Jerry West - Mathematica

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

600 Maryland Ave., SW, Suite 550

Washington, DC 20024-2512

E-mail: jwest@mathematica-mpr.com

Ann Collins – Abt Assoc. Cambridge, MA

Abt Associates Inc.

55 Wheeler Street

Cambridge, MA 02138-1168

E-mail: Ann_Collins@abtassociates.com

Ron Haskins – Brookings Institution and Casey 

Foundation

The Brookings Institution

1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20036

E-mail: rhaskins@brookings.edu

Ivelisse Martinez-Beck – HHS Division of Child and 

Family Development

Administration for Children and Families

370 L’Enfant Promenade, S.W.

7th Floor West, Room 7A011

Washington, D.C. 20447

E-mail: ivelisse.martinezbeck@acf.hhs.gov

Lynda Laughlin – Census

U.S. Census Bureau

4600 Silver Hill Road

Suitland, MD 20746

E-mail: lynda.l.laughlin@census.gov

Substantive Experts: PFI and Their Affiliation at the Time of TRP Recruitment

Richard Brandon – Univ. of Washington

Human Services Policy Center, Evans School of Public 

Affairs

University of Washington

1107 NE 45th St.

Seattle, WA 98105

E-mail: brandon@u.washington.edu

Annette Lareau – Univ. of Pennsylvania

Department of Sociology

University of Pennsylvania

McNeil Hall

Philadelphia, PA 19104

E-mail: alareau@sas.upenn.edu

Joyce Epstein – The Johns Hopkins University

Center for Social Organization of Schools

3003 N. Charles St., Suite 200

Baltimore, MD 21218

E-mail: jepstein@csos.jhu.edu

Lawrence Aber - NYU

Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human 

Development

New York University

82 Washington Square East

New York, NY 10003

E-mail: lawrence.aber@nyu.edu

As noted above, the ATES is a product of ongoing work guided by GEMEnA, which has met monthly since 

October 2009 and consists of senior staff from the Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Council 

of Economic Advisors, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Science and 

Engineering Statistics, the Office of Statistical and Science Policy (OMB), and the Office of the Under Secretary of 

Education. In addition, GEMEnA established an Expert Panel of substantive experts in the fields of workforce 

education, economic development, and non-degree credentials that met in November of 2012 and March and 

December of 2014 to provide input on ATES content.
9

Survey and Methodology Experts: GEMEnA Member Agency Representatives

Census Bureau

Kurt Bauman

James Spletzer

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Dori Allard

Harley Frazis

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics

Dan Foley

John Finamore

Council of Economic Advisors

Jordan Matsudairas

OMB Office of Statistical and Science Policy

Shelly Martinez

Department of Education – Office of the Under 

Secretary

Jon O’Bergh

National Center for Education Statistics

Sharon Boivin

Lisa Hudson

Kashka Kubzdela

Sarah Grady

Andy Zukerberg

Substantive Experts: GEMEnA Expert Panel Members

Jim Van Erden

Senior Policy Advisor

National Association of State Workforce Agencies/

Information Technology Support Center

Washington, DC

Evelyn Ganzglass

Director of Workforce Development

CLASP

Washington, DC

Parminder Jassal

Executive Director

ACT Foundation

Austin, TX

Morris Kleiner

Professor and Director of Graduate Studies

Humphrey School of Public Affairs

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, MN

James Parker

Senior Research and Policy Associate

Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy

New York City, NY

Kent Phillippe

Associate Vice President,

Research and Student Success

American Association of Community Colleges

Washington, DC

Kenneth Poole

CEO/President

Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness

Arlington, VA

Andrew Reamer

Research Professor

George Washington Institute of Public Policy

George Washington University

Washington, DC

Jesse Rothstein

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics

Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy

University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, CA

Jeff Strohl

Director of Research

Center on Education and the Workforce

Georgetown Public Policy Institute

Georgetown University

Washington, DC

Michelle Van Noy

Researcher

Heldrich Center for Workforce Development

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

New Brunswick, NJ

Holly Zanville

Senior Research Officer

Lumina Foundation

Indianapolis, IN

A.9 Payments to Respondents

Screener incentives. The NHES:2003 included an extensive experiment in the use of small cash incentives to 

improve unit response. The experiment demonstrated that gains in respondent cooperation could be realized with 

relatively modest cash incentives (Brick et al. 2006). Such incentives were used in NHES:2005 and NHES:2007. 

The NHES:2011 Field Test included an incentive experiment at the screener level testing the effect of including a

$2 cash incentive on response rates compared to a $5 cash incentive in the initial screener mailing. The $5 screener 

was associated with higher response rates than the $2 incentive, so the $5 incentive was used in the NHES:2012.
10

Results from the NHES-FS indicate that the $5 incentive is associated with higher response rates than no incentive. 

We will continue with this approach in NHES:2016 and use a $5 cash incentive in the first screener questionnaire 

mailing, except for households allocated to the treatment groups for the incentive experiment (described in detail 

below and in section A-2 above).

Topical incentives. The NHES:2012 included an incentive experiment at the topical level to further refine an 

optimal strategy for the use of incentives in the NHES. For those households in which a child was selected as the 

subject of an ECPP or PFI questionnaire, cases that responded to the first or second mailing of the screener received

a $5 cash incentive with the initial topical survey mailing. Evidence from the 2011 Field Test indicated that topical 

response rates could benefit significantly by providing later screener respondents with a larger topical incentive. To 

confirm this finding, NCES subsampled late screener respondents (those responding to the 3rd or 4th questionnaire 

mailing) to receive either a $5 or $15 cash incentive with their first topical survey mailing. The results from the 

NHES:2012 indicate that among later screener responders, the $15 incentive was associated with higher response 

rates compared to the $5 incentive. Based on these findings, the same strategy is planned for NHES:2016. NCES 

will send a $5 cash incentive in the initial topical mailing to cases that respond to the first or second screener 

mailing and a $15 cash incentive in the initial topical mailing to any cases that respond later than three days after 

the third screener mailing.

Targeted incentive experiment incentives. As described in section A-2, the NHES:2016 will also include a targeted 

incentive experiment designed to examine the effectiveness of leveraging auxiliary frame data to target lower 

screener incentives to households expected to be most likely to respond regardless of incentive amount, and higher 

screener incentives to households expected to be less likely to respond. The current plan for the screener incentive 

experiment is described below. NCES is exploring developing a more sophisticated model for determining cut 

points and incentive amounts. If the proposed plan changes, NCES will submit a change request.

The allocation to the targeted incentive experiment totals 45,000 households. Among the random subsample of 

35,000 households selected for the “modeled incentive treatment group,” respondents will be placed in one of three 

treatments, depending on the predicted response propensity attributed to that address. To predict response 

propensity for sample members, a logistic regression model will be estimated using the 2014 NHES-FS screener 

sample, with each household’s final screener response status (respondent or nonrespondent) as the dependent 

variable and a set of demographic characteristics (obtained from block group- or tract-level Census data and 

commercially available auxiliary data appended to the frame such as race/ethnicity makeup of Census block group 

or tract, age makeup of Census block group or tract, whether or not the address has a phone number match, and the 

Census Bureau’s value for a “low response score” for the address’s block group or tract) as the independent 

variables. The resulting model coefficients will then be applied to the NHES:2016 cases assigned to the modeled 

incentive group, generating a predicted response propensity for each address. Households in the modeled incentive 

group will be sorted by their predicted response propensities and divided into three strata: a high-propensity stratum 

(those whose predicted response propensity is above the 75th percentile), a medium-propensity stratum (those 

whose predicted response propensity is between the 25th and 75th percentiles), and a low-propensity stratum (those 

whose predicted response propensity is below the 25th percentile). Households in the high-propensity stratum will 

receive a $2 screener incentive, and households in the low-propensity stratum will receive $7. The remaining 

households in the modeled incentive group (the medium-propensity stratum) will receive the same $5 screener 

incentive as the main NHES sample2. The treatment group will be compared to the control group in the main NHES 

sample (which will receive the standard $5 screener incentive) on the following dimensions: screener response rate 

(overall and by key subgroups); topical response rate; cost per unit (incentive + mailing costs only); demographic 

characteristics (from both frame and topical data); responses to key survey items; differences between respondents 

and nonrespondents in frame indicators used to target the incentives; and response quality among respondents.

In addition to the subsample assigned to the modeled incentive treatment group, a subsample of 10,000 households 

(referred to as the “$2-only treatment group”) will be assigned to automatically receive $2. This will allow response 

rates under the targeted incentive structure to be compared to those under both a uniform $5 structure and a uniform 

$2 structure. It will also allow more detailed analysis of the sensitivity of different types of households to the 

 

2 A $2 incentive, rather than no incentive, was chosen as the minimum incentive amount for this experiment in order to reduce the likely impact of the

experiment on overall response rates to NHES:2016. Based on the results of the NHES:2011 Field Test (which tested a $2 incentive) and the NHES-FS (which 

tested no incentive), a $2 incentive is expected to result in a smaller decrease in response rates, relative to the standard $5 incentive, than would be observed 

with no incentive. Therefore, in NHES:2016, all households will receive at least some incentive. 
11

incentive amount, in order to determine whether the targeted incentive approach could be further refined in future 

administrations. We hypothesize that the data will show that we could use a $2 incentive for a larger proportion of 

the household sample in future NHES administrations.

Households that receive $7 at the screener stage will also receive a $7 topical incentive (unless they return a 

screener at the third mailing wave or after, in which case they will receive a $15 topical incentive, as was done 

successfully in the NHES:2012 to boost topical response among late-screener respondents). Table 1 summarizes the 

incentive structure and sample size for each control and treatment group in the targeted incentive experiment.

Table 1. Incentive amounts and paper screener sample sizes for targeted incentive experiment control and 

treatment groups

Predicted response propensity

Group

$5-only control group Modeled incentive 

treatment group $2-only treatment group

High (above 75th percentile) $5 (31,500) $2 (8,750) $2 (2,500)

Medium (25th to 75th percentile) $5 (63,000) $5 (17,500) $2 (5,000)

Low (below 25th percentile) $5 (31,500) $7 (8,750) $2 (2,500)

NOTE: Figures in parentheses show the count of screener households assigned to receive each incentive amount. Counts 

exclude web screener cases. All 35,000 web screener cases will receive the $5 incentive.

Screener and topical response rates within the modeled incentive treatment group will be compared to those within 

the $5-only control group and the $2-only treatment group. In addition, key characteristics of respondents will be 

compared between the groups to determine the possible effect of the modeled incentive approach on unit 

nonresponse bias. At the screener level, the treatment group allocations will allow a response rate difference of 

about 1 percentage point or greater between the modeled incentive and $5-only groups, and about 2.5 percentage 

points or greater between the modeled incentive and $2-only groups to be statistically detected with 80 percent 

probability. At the topical level, the detectible response rate difference will be approximately 2.5 percentage points 

between the modeled incentive and $5-only groups, and approximately 5 percentage points between the modeled 

incentive and $2-only groups.

Web experiment incentives. Only households that are not selected for the web experiment will be eligible for the 

targeted incentive experiment; all households selected for the web experiment will receive the standard $5 screener 

incentive. Web experiment cases will also be comparable to the main collection for topical incentives3 with the 

exception that web experiment respondents who complete the screener and topical without a break-off or change in 

sampled household member will not receive a topical incentive.

A.10 Assurance of Confidentiality

Respondents will be informed of the voluntary nature of the survey and of the confidentiality provision in the initial 

cover letter and on the questionnaires, stating that their responses may be used for statistical purposes only and may 

not be disclosed, or used, in identifiable form for any other purpose except as required by law [Education Sciences 

Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA 2002), 20 U.S. Code § 9573].

Additionally, all staff members and subcontractors working on the NHES and having access to the data are required 

to sign the NCES Affidavit of Nondisclosure. Notarized affidavits are kept on file by the contractor and submitted 

to NCES quarterly. In addition, all contractor staff members who have access to confidential data and work on the 

project more than 30 days are required to have a federal background check.

A.11 Sensitive Questions

The NHES is a voluntary survey, and no persons are required to respond to it. In addition, respondents may decline 

to answer any question in the survey. Respondents are informed of the voluntary nature of the survey in the cover 

letter that accompanies the questionnaire, as well as on the actual questionnaire. At the same time, some items in 

the surveys may be considered sensitive by some respondents:

 

3 Web experiment cases will receive the standard $5 or $15 topical incentive depending on which mailing of the letter prompted their web response.
12

ATES: The ATES includes an experiment asking about earnings. This information may be considered sensitive:

 Personal earnings in the past year (categorical)

A measure of earnings is important because educational attainment is statistically associated with earnings,

and the empirical properties of the survey measures may differ for people with different earnings levels. The 

American Community Survey (ACS) was the source for most of the ATES employment and background

items. Item response rates for earnings questions were reasonably high in the 2014 NHES Feasibility Study.

The item response rate for personal earnings was 96.4 percent.

PFI and ECPP: Child development and education experts consider economic disadvantage and children’s 

disabilities to be important factors in children’s school experiences and their activities outside of school. As a 

result, the child surveys contain measures of these characteristics, including:

 Household income;

 Receipt of public assistance in the form of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, 

and the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC); and

 Children’s disability conditions.

Measures of household income and government assistance are important because access to early childhood

programs by children at-risk and the education involvement of families of children from different socioeconomic 

backgrounds is of interest to policymakers, child development specialists, and educators. These items are important 

in identifying children at risk and have been administered successfully in previous NHES studies. Respondents are 

also asked the age at which they first became a parent. This may be sensitive for parents in some situations.

The 2012 response rates for these items were very high. For total household income, the 2012 PFI survey had an 

item response rate of 95.4 percent. Item response rates for receipt of public assistance were also high: for 

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, 97.9 percent; for the Women, Infants, and Children Program, 97.7 

percent; and for Food Stamps, 98.4 percent. In the 2012 mail survey, it is not possible to examine item missing data 

for child disability because of the multiple response list format of the question. Missing data may indicate either 

unreported data or that the child does not have a disability. However, in prior NHES collections, response to this 

item was high: in the 2007 PFI the item response rates were over 99 percent. In the 2012 PFI, the item response rate 

for age at which the child’s parent first became a parent to any child was 96.2 for the first parent reported and 96.0 

for the second parent reported.

ECPP Survey: In addition to the items above, the ECPP survey also includes questions about assistance to pay for 

child care. This measure is important to understand families’ and children’s access to early childhood programs.

PFI Survey: The PFI survey includes items concerning children’s school performance and difficulties in school. 

Among these are:

 Children’s school performance and difficulties, including school grades, grade retention, suspensions, and 

expulsions; and

 Identification of children’s schools.

Items concerning school performance and difficulty are important to the PFI survey as correlates of parent and 

family involvement in children’s education. These items were asked in the NHES:2012 PFI and item response rates 

for these items were high: 99.0 percent for children’s grades, 97.6 percent for out-of-school suspension, and 97.5 

percent for expulsion.

Another element of the surveys that may be sensitive to some parents is the identification of children’s schools. 

This feature allows analysts to link the NHES data to other NCES datasets containing additional information about 

schools, greatly enhancing the ability to examine the relationships between students’ and families’ experiences and 

the characteristics of schools. The item response rate for the identification of the child’s school was 97.0 percent in 

NHES:2012.
13

A.12 Estimated Response Burden

The NHES:2016 will screen 206,000 households. An expected screener response rate of approximately 64.021

percent and an address ineligibility4rate of approximately 9.375 percent are assumed, bringing the total number of 

expected screeners to 119,520.

5

From these completed screeners, it is expected that approximately 47.411 percent 

or 56,666 households will contain an eligible adult but no eligible children; approximately 30.4 percent or 36,333

households will contain an eligible adult and an eligible child; and approximately 1.25 percent or 1,494 households 

will contain an eligible child but no eligible adults (for example, children who live with grandparents above age 

65)6. The seeded sample will not receive a screener questionnaire and is in addition to the screener sample of 

206,000 households. A detailed description of the planned sampling design is provided in this submission in 

Supporting Statement Part B.

The response burden per instrument and the total response burden are shown in Table 2. The administration times 

for the screener, adult questionnaires, and child questionnaires are based on practice administrations and past 

experience. The expected number of respondents and number of responses are based on the expected numbers of 

completed surveys of each type, discussed in section B.1.3. The hourly rate of $22.65 is based on the average for all 

civilian workers from the December 2014 National Compensation Survey 

(http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t02.htm). For the NHES:2016, a total of 32,029 burden hours are anticipated, 

resulting in a burden cost to respondents of approximately $725,457.

Table 2. Estimated response burden for NHES:2016

Interview forms

Estimated 

time 

(minutes)

Number 

sampled

Anticipated 

Response 

Rate

Estimated 

Number of 

respondents

Estimated 

Number 

of 

responses

Total 

time 

(hours)

Screener 8 206,000* 64.021% 119,520 119,520 15,936

ATES questionnaire - national sample 10 63,855 74.245% 47,409 47,409 7,902

ATES questionnaire - seeded sample 10 1,000 60.000% 600 600 100

ECPP questionnaire 20 9,540 79.245% 7,560 7,560 2,520

PFI-Enrolled questionnaire 20 20,224 79.242% 16,026 16,026 5,342

PFI-Homeschooled questionnaire 20 869 79.171% 688 688 229

Study Total 191,803 191,803 32,029

* Approximately 9.375% of addresses will be returned by USPS as invalid, reducing the final sample size to 186,688 addresses. 

Calculations of number of screener respondents are based on 186,688 addresses rather than 206,000.

NOTE: Eligibility and response rates for the national sample are estimated based on NHES:2012 and the 2014 NHES Feasibility Study 

(NHES-FS), and represent rounded weighted averages of the rates expected within each experimental treatment group. The response 

rate for the ATES seeded sample is approximated based on the response rate to the NHES-FS seeded sample. Details may not sum to 

totals due to rounding.

A.13 Cost to Respondents

There are also no recordkeeping requirements associated with NHES, and no costs to respondents beyond the time 

to participate presented in table 1 above.

A.14 Cost to the Federal Government

The total cost of NHES:2016 to the federal government is approximately $11.8 million over a period of 20 months. 

This includes all direct and indirect costs of the design, data collection, analysis, reporting phases of the study, and

creation of data sets.

 

4

Ineligible addresses are those that are undeliverable. Screener mailings for an address where one or more mailings are returned as a 

postmaster return (PMR) and no mailings are returned complete or refused will lead to an address being coded as ineligible.

5 Address eligibility and response rates are estimated based on the 2014 NHES Feasibility Study (NHES-FS), and are calculated to account 

for expected differential response rates within sampling strata and experimental treatment groups.

6

Percentages based on estimates from the 2014 NHES Feasibility Study (NHES-FS) screener.
14

A.15 Reasons for Program Changes

This is a revision of the NHES collection. The decrease in the estimated respondent burden as compared to that 

approved for NHES:2015 results from NHES:2015 having been planned to include five topical surveys (PFIEnrolled, PFI-Homeschooled, ECPP, CWS, and TWS), while the NHES:2016 will include four topical surveys 

(PFI-Enrolled, PFI-Homeschooled, ECPP, and ATES). The initially planned Credentials for Work Survey (CWS) 

and the pilot Training for Work Survey (TWS), have been combined for NHES:2016 into one, more time efficient 

ATES instrument.

A.16 Publication Plans and Project Schedule

Exhibit 2 presents the schedule of project activities for NHES:2016. Based on the results of NHES:2016, datasets, 

statistics, and reports will be produced. The following are the planned outcomes of the NHES:2016:

 A fully documented public-use data set that will be available for download from the NCES website;

 A fully documented restricted-use data set that will be available for restricted-use data license holders only;

 A codebook with weighted and unweighted frequencies of all variables; and

 First Look Reports that highlight key findings from the study.

Exhibit 2. NHES:2016 schedule of major activities

Task Date of Scheduled Conduct/Completion

Survey Instruments Formatting and Printing November-December, 2015

Data Collection Begins (advance letter mailing) January 2, 2016

Data Collection Ends August 31, 2016

Public-use data files released August 31, 2017

Restricted-use data files released September 30, 2017

A.17 Approval to Not Display the Expiration Date for OMB Approval

The OMB authorization number and expiration date will be displayed on the questionnaires and web screener.

A.18 Exceptions to the Certification Statement

There are no exceptions to the certification statement.