National Household Education Survey 

2016 (NHES:2016)

Full-scale Data Collection

OMB# 1850-0768 v.11

Part A

April 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................................................................ 7

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.......................................................................................... 12

A.10 Assurance of Confidentiality..................................................................................... 12

A.11 Sensitive Questions ................................................................................................... 13

A.12 Estimated Response Burden...................................................................................... 14

A.13 Cost to Respondents.................................................................................................. 14

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

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

A.16 Publication Plans and Project Schedule..................................................................... 15

A.17 Approval to Not Display the Expiration Date for OMB Approval ........................... 15

A.18 Exceptions to the Certification Statement ................................................................. 15

List of Tables

Table

1 Estimated response burden for NHES:2016.............................................................. 14

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................................................................... 15
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 over time 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(s) receives which topical survey(s). 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 
2

interest to education researchers and policymakers.

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) and the Parent and Family Involvement in Education (PFI) 

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.

Overview of NHES:2016 Target population

The NHES:2016 will include the ATES, the PFI, and the ECPP. Adults ages 16 to 65 who are not enrolled in 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 to be sampled household members for the child-focused surveys. The PFI targets

families of children and youth enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade or homeschooled for these grades, with 

an age limit of 20 years, while the ECPP targets families of children ages 6 or younger who are not yet enrolled in 

kindergarten. Adults knowledgeable about the care and education of the sampled children respond for the surveys 

about children.
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This submission for clearance of NHES:2016 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 below. All Englishlanguage respondent contact materials are provided in Appendix 1. Their Spanish translations are currently 

undergoing cognitive testing and will be included in the update to Appendix 1 by July 2015.

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 two child-focused topical surveys (PFI and ECPP). 

The surveys are shown in Appendix 2, along with an addendum reflecting potential revisions based on recent 

cognitive interviews. The planned NHES:2016 administration of the PFI and ECPP surveys is a repeat of the childfocused 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, ECPP, and ATES are 

shown in Appendix 2 along with an addendum showing proposed changes based on the results of cognitive 

interviews conducted in early 2016.

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.

The Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (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 
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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-Enrolled and PFIHomeschooled 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 the prevalence and key characteristics of non-degree 

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, who are 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.

Ongoing Development of NHES:2016 Surveys

The NHES:2016 instruments and respondent contact materials are currently undergoing cognitive testing through 

June 2015. Results of this testing will likely lead to some changes designed to improve respondents’ understanding 

of the language used in the letters, postcards, and survey items. The documents in this submission, including 

instruments and contact materials will be updated accordingly by July 2015. The ongoing testing includes:

Phase 1 Spanish language interviews for respondent contact materials and screener instrument – The goal of 

this research is to test and revise as necessary the Spanish translations of respondent contact materials including 

letters and postcards, the screener instrument, and a few items from ATES that had not been previously

translated. Detailed information about these interviews can be found in the OMB generic clearance package 

#1850-0803 v.128.

Phase 2 Spanish language interviews for topical questionnaires – The goal of this research is to test and revise 

as necessary the Spanish translations of the topical instruments. Probing will focus on questions whose 

translations differ from the NHES:2012 administration, although all translation issues that arise will be 

evaluated. Detailed information about these interviews can be found in the OMB generic clearance package 

#1850-0803 v.131.

Phase 3 interviews on contact materials for web experiment – The goal of this research is to test and revise as 

necessary the language and Spanish translations of contact materials for the web experiment described in the 

NHES:2016 Experiments section below. These interviews will be conducted in both English and Spanish. The 

OMB generic clearance request for these interviews is scheduled to be submitted at the end of April.

PFI and ECPP interviews – A series of cognitive interviews were conducted in early 2015 to test and revise a 

subset of items from the PFI questionnaires, a series of new and revised ECPP items, and changes to the format 

of the child-focused questionnaires to make them more comparable to ATES. It included a test of items added 

to the PFI-Enrolled instrument from the PFI-Homeschooled instrument to better account for part-time 

homeschoolers. NCES is still evaluating the results from this set of cognitive interviews. Detailed information 

about these interviews can be found in the OMB generic clearance package #1850-0803 v.121. Results from 

these interviews and potential revisions to the instruments are described in the addendum to Appendix 2.

ATES interviews. – The ATES has undergone several revisions in response to prior qualitative research 

activities. Since the last cognitive testing of the ATES instrument, however, several changes have been made 
5

that require additional testing. These include slight wording changes to simplify items, switching to asking 

about the “most important” certification rather than “the last” certification, changing from a grid format to a 

repeating series of questions about up to three certifications, and adding a new series of questions on workexperience programs. Detailed information about these interviews can be found in the OMB generic clearance 

package #1850-0803 v.127.

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. Unlike the paper and 

pencil versions, however, skip patterns in the web instruments will be invisible to the respondent. This 

experiment will also test “on the fly” 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. 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 follow up mailing for 

both the screener and the topical surveys, sampled web respondents will automatically receive a paper and 

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

Several key design features and the sample size of the web experiment are still under development and will be 

described fully in the update to the documents in this submission that will be available by July 2015. 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, 3) the number of breakoffs at 

the screener and topical stages, and 4) 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.

Targeted Incentive Experiment

The NHES:2016 will also include an incentive experiment designed to examine the effectiveness of leveraging 

auxiliary frame data to target lower screener incentives to households that have been historically most likely to 

respond, regardless of incentive amount. Preliminary analysis of an experiment in the NHES:FS comparing a 

$0 incentive to a $5 incentive suggests that there are certain types of households that are less sensitive to 

screener incentives than others. This means that NCES can potentially reduce operational costs without 

introducing bias by targeting specific households with a $2 incentive rather than a $5 incentive. For 

NHES:2016, NCES plans to create a model using data from the NHES:FS, the addressed-based sample frame, 

and Census data to identify suitable households to target with a smaller incentive. Broadly, the model will 

identify households that meet one or both of the following criteria: (1) likely to represent overrepresented 

subgroups with high response propensity and (2) likely to be less sensitive to incentive value.

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, and the ability to tailor items to each specific 

respondent. 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.
6

 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 above 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 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 
7

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, 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.

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
8

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

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 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
11

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.

Survey and Methodology Experts: GEMEnA Member Agency Representatives

Census Bureau

Stephanie Ewert

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Dori Allard

Harley Frazis

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics

Dan Foley

John Finamore

Council of Economic Advisors

Jordan Matsudaira

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
12

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

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. 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.

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.

As described above, 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 that have been 

historically most likely to respond regardless of incentive amount. Among the random subsample for the targeted 

incentive experiment, respondents will be placed in one of two treatments, depending on response propensity 

attributed to that address based on Census data and other commercially-available auxiliary data appended to the 

sampling frame. One treatment will receive a $2 rather than a $5 screener incentive (higher response propensity, 

less sensitive to incentives), and one treatment will receive a $7 rather than a $5 screener incentive (lower response 

propensity, more sensitive to incentives). The treatment and control groups will be compared to the control group in 

the main NHES sample which will receive the standard $5 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.

Respondents who receive the $7 incentive for the screener will also receive a $7 incentive (rather than a $5 

incentive) in the initial topical mailing, unless they respond to the screener later than three days after the mailing, in 

which case they will receive the $15 incentive comparable to the non-treatment group. The required sample size for 

the targeted incentive experiment is still being calculated and will be described in the update to this document, 

which will be available by July 2015.

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].
13

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:

ATES: The ATES includes an experiment asking about earnings in two different ways. 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 2013 pilot test. 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 
14

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.

A.12 Estimated Response Burden

The NHES:2016 will screen 200,000 households. An expected screener response rate of 70 percent and an address 

ineligibility1rate of 11 percent are assumed, bringing the total number of expected screeners to 124,600. From these

completed screeners, it is expected that approximately 56 percent or 69,341 households will contain an eligible 

adult but no eligible children; approximately 27 percent or 34,167 households will contain an eligible adult and an 

eligible child; and approximately 0.4 percent or 534 households will contain an eligible child but no eligible adults 

(for example, children who live with grandparents above age 65)2. NCES is in the process of evaluating a number 

of sampling strategies designed to improve efficiency and reduce cost, which are described in this submission in 

Supporting Statement Part B. Based on the evaluation of the various sampling strategies, the final sample design 

will be selected and its description updated in documents in this submission by July 2015.

The response burden per instrument and the total response burden are shown in Table 1. 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 $21.50 is based on the average for all 

civilian workers from the March 2013 National Compensation Survey (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t02.htm). 

For the NHES:2016, a total of 30,373 burden hours are anticipated, resulting in a burden cost to respondents of 

approximately $653,020.

Table 1. 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 8 200,000* 70% 124,600 124,600 16,613

ATES questionnaire 10 61,882 70% 43,317 43,317 7,220

ECPP questionnaire 20 9,695 75% 7,271 7,271 2,424

PFI questionnaire 20 16,464 75% 12,348 12,348 4,116

Study Total 187,536 187,536 30,373

* Approximately 11% of addresses will be returned by USPS as invalid, reducing the final sample size to 178,000 addresses.

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.

 

1

Ineligible addresses are those that are undeliverable. Once a screener mailing for an address is returned as a postmaster return (PMR), the 

address will be coded ineligible.

2

Percentages based on population proportions from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey 

(CPS).
15

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 four topical surveys (PFI,

ECPP, CWS, and TWS), while the NHES:2016 will include three topical surveys (PFI, 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 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.