[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 8 (Friday, January 11, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 2409-2411]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-00416]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Administration for Children and Families


Proposed Information Collection Activity; Comment Request

    Proposed Projects:
    Title: Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration 
(CSPED).
    OMB No.: 0970-NEW.
    Description:
    The Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) within the 
Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is proposing data 
collection activity as part of the Child Support Noncustodial Parent 
Employment Demonstration (CSPED). In October 2012, OCSE issued grants 
to eight state child support agencies to provide employment, parenting, 
and child support services to non-custodial parents who are having 
difficulty meeting their child support obligation. The overall 
objective of the CSPED evaluation is to document and evaluate the 
effectiveness of the approaches taken by these eight CSPED grantees. 
This evaluation will yield information about effective strategies for 
improving child support payments by providing non-custodial parents 
employment and other services through child support programs. It will 
generate extensive information on how these programs operated, what 
they cost, the effects the programs had, and whether the benefits of 
the programs exceed their costs. The information gathered will be 
critical to informing decisions related to future investments in child 
support-led employment-focused programs for non-custodial parents who 
have difficulty meeting their child support obligations.
    The CSPED evaluation will include the following two interconnected 
components or ``studies'':
    1. Implementation and Cost Study. The goal of the implementation 
and cost

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study is to provide a detailed description of the programs--how they 
are implemented, their participants, the contexts in which they are 
operated, their promising practices, and their costs. The detailed 
descriptions will assist in interpreting program impacts, identifying 
program features and conditions necessary for effective program 
replication or improvement, and carefully documenting the costs of 
delivering these services. Key activities of the implementation and 
cost study will include: (1) Conducting semi-structured interviews with 
program staff and selected community partner organizations to gather 
information on program implementation and costs; (2) conducting focus 
groups with program participants to elicit participation experiences; 
(3) administering a web-based survey to program staff and community 
partners to capture broader staff program experiences; and (4) 
collecting data on study participant service use, dosage, and duration 
of enrollment throughout the demonstration using a web-based Management 
Information System (MIS).
    2. Impact Study. The goal of the impact study is to provide 
rigorous estimates of the effectiveness of the eight programs using an 
experimental research design. Program applicants who are eligible for 
CSPED services will be randomly assigned to either a program group that 
is offered program services or a control group that is not. The study 
MIS that will document service use for the implementation study will 
also be used by grantee staff to conduct random assignment for the 
impact study. The impact study will rely on data from surveys of 
participants, as well as administrative records from state and county 
data systems. Survey data will be collected twice from program 
applicants. Baseline information will be collected from all 
noncustodial parents who apply for the program prior to random 
assignment. A follow-up survey will be collected from sample members 
twelve months after random assignment. A wide range of measures will be 
collected through surveys, including measures of employment stability 
and quality, barriers to employment, parenting and co-parenting, and 
demographic and socio-economic characteristics. In addition, data on 
child support obligations and payments, Temporary Assistance for Needy 
Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) 
benefits, Medicaid receipt, involvement with the criminal justice 
system, and earnings and benefit data collected through the 
Unemployment Insurance (UI) system will be obtained from state and 
county databases.
    This 60-Day Notice covers the following data collection activities: 
(1) Guides for the semi-structured interviews with program staff and 
community partners, (2) focus group guides for program participants, 
(3) the web-based survey to document program staff and partner 
experiences, (4) the MIS functions for tracking participation in the 
program, (5) the introductory script which program staff will use to 
introduce the study to participants, (6) the baseline survey used to 
capture participant characteristics prior to randomization, (7) the MIS 
functions for conducting random assignment, and (8) the extraction of 
child support, benefit, earnings, and criminal justice data extracted 
from state and county administrative data systems.
    Respondents:
    Respondents include program applicants, study participants, grantee 
staff and community partners, as well as state and county staff 
responsible for extracting data from government databases for the 
evaluation. Specific respondents per instrument are noted in the burden 
tables below.

Annual Burden Estimates

    The following instruments, part of the baseline data collection and 
site Management Information Systems (MIS), are proposed for public 
comment under this 60-Day Federal Register Notice.

                                          Implementation and Cost Study
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                    Number of    Average burden
           Instrument               Number of     responses per     hours per     Total burden     Total annual
                                   respondents     respondent       response          hours        burden hours
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Semi-structured interview topic             120               2          1                  240             80
 guide with program staff and
 community partners............
Focus group guide with program              240               1          1.5                360            120
 participants..................
Web survey of program staff and             200               2          0.5                200             66.7
 community partners............
Study MIS for grantee and                   200           1,500          0.0333          10,000          3,333.3
 partner staff to document
 program participation.........
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


                                                  Impact Study
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                    Number of    Average burden
           Instrument               Number of     responses per     hours per     Total burden     Total annual
                                   respondents     respondent       response          hours        burden hours
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introductory script:
    Grantee staff..............             120             105          0.1667           2,100            700
    Program applicants \1\.....          12,600               1          0.1667           2,100            700
Baseline survey:
    Study participants.........          12,000               1          0.5833           7,000           2333.3
    Study MIS for grantee staff             120             105          0.1667           2,100            700
     to conduct random
     assignment................
    State and county                         32               2          8                  512            170.7
     administrative records....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Five percent of program applicants are not expected to agree to participate in the study; thus there are 5%
  more program applicants than study participants.


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    Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: 8,204.
    In compliance with the requirements of Section 506(c)(2)(A) of the 
Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Administration for Children and 
Families is soliciting public comment on the specific aspects of the 
information collection described above. Copies of the proposed 
collection of information can be obtained and comments may be forwarded 
by writing to the Administration for Children and Families, Office of 
Planning, Research and Evaluation, 370 L'Enfant Promenade SW., 
Washington, DC 20447, Attn: ACF Reports Clearance Officer. Email 
address: [email protected]. All requests should be identified 
by the title of the information collection.
    The Department specifically requests comments on: (a) Whether the 
proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper 
performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the 
information shall have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the 
agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of 
information; (c) the quality, utility, and clarity of the information 
to be collected; and (d) ways to minimize the burden of the collection 
of information on respondents, including through the use of automated 
collection techniques or other forms of information technology. 
Consideration will be given to comments and suggestions submitted 
within 60 days of this publication.

Robert Sargis,
Reports Clearance Officer.
[FR Doc. 2013-00416 Filed 1-10-13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4184-01-P