[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 80 (Thursday, April 25, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 24423-24425]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-09797]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Administration for Children and Families


Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

    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 noncustodial 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 noncustodial 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 noncustodial 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 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

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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.
    A 60-Day Federal Register Notice was published for this study on 
January 11, 2013. This 30-Day Federal Register Notice covers the 
following data collection activities: (1) Topic guides for 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 Management 
Information System (MIS) functions for tracking participation in the 
program, (5) an 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 table below.

Annual Burden Estimates

    The following tables provide the burden estimates for the 
implementation and cost study and the impact study components of the 
current request.

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


                                                  Impact Study
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                      Number of       Average
                    Instrument                        Number of     responses per   burden hours   Total burden
                                                     respondents     respondent     per response       hours
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introductory script:
    Grantee staff................................             120             105         0.1667           2,100
    Program applicants \1\.......................          12,600               1         0.1667           2,100
Baseline survey of study participants............          12,000               1         0.5833           7,000
Study MIS used by program staff to conduct random             120             105         0.1667           2,100
 assignment......................................
Protocol for collecting administrative records...              32               2         8                  512
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\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.

    Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: 8,204.
    Additional Information: In compliance with the requirements of 
Section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the Paper Work 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 may be obtained 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. All requests should be identified by the 
title of the information collection. Email address: 
[email protected].
    OMB Comment: OMB is required to make a decision concerning the 
collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of 
this document in the Federal Register. Therefore, a comment is best 
assured of having its full effect if OMB receives it within 30 days of 
publication. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed 
information collection should

[[Page 24425]]

be sent directly to the following: Office of Management and Budget, 
Paperwork Reduction Project, Email: [email protected], Attn: 
Desk Officer for the Administration for Children and Families.

Robert Sargis,
Reports Clearance Officer.
[FR Doc. 2013-09797 Filed 4-24-13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4184-01-P