The National Children's Study 2014 An Assessment (2014) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: Field Costs for the National Children's Study: First 7 Years
Appendix B: Field Costs for the National Children's Study: First 7 Years
Pages 145-160
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From page 145... ...
. Thus, in order to assess alternative approaches with key design elements, such as sampling frame and design, the recruitment and retention process, and broad aspects of the interview schedule and data collection, the panel commissioned two consultants -- Lisa Schwartz of Mathematica Policy Research and Randall Olsen of Ohio State University -- to construct a cost model of several design options.
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From page 146... ...
Those omitted costs include • project management and oversight of contractors by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) ; • any costs associated with the Vanguard Study and pretesting at any sites; • any costs associated with purchasing or building the sample frame; • design and supervision of the sampling activities and the production of sample weights; • design and review of questionnaire and specimen collection protocols and the preparation, printing and distribution of training materials or other supplies and consumables to the field; • costs to assay environmental samples or analyze blood samples other than what the Program Office determines is necessary for quality control; • security tasks to keep the NCS compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002; • management of the data collection contractors; • management of the data flow to and from the field to whichever con tractor is handling the data; • programming of the questionnaires, configuration and distribution of laptops, including troubleshooting repair, replacement, and inventory control; • tracking and storing all specimens; and • data management, including storage, data cleaning, variable creation, geocoding, appending of other data to the master database, docu mentation, generation of user data files whether for public access or restricted access, user support, user outreach of any kind, and public ity and promotion of the data.
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From page 147... ...
In one case, the need for some in-person interviews at birth, the consultant's assumption was used in the cost analysis. We took as our baseline model the design as described by the NCS Program Office in documents submitted to the panel.1 We begin with a high-level summary of the designs included in our cost models.
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From page 148... ...
The scientific value of the prenatal sample led the panel to consider options for increasing the prenatal fraction of the sample without increasing the total field costs, which could be done in a variety of ways. As we detail below, dropping the preconception sample and then making 97 percent of the sample prenatal through provider-based recruitment comes very close to achieving the goal.
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From page 149... ...
• Model 8–maximum prenatal recruitment, no preconception supple mental sample, no other convenience sample, and cost neutrality: Same as Model 3 except there are no convenience samples and only 96,000 children are enrolled in the study.
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From page 150... ...
This assumption may be low if calling is done from a national survey firm's premises. Sample Recruitment and Retention • 250 hospital PSUs and 1,250 practice providers are recruited at 100 professional hours of senior level staff time per entity (150,000 profes sional staff hours)
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From page 151... ...
• Hospital staff require a stipend for collecting cord blood, cord sam ples, and placenta samples at birth. Estimated hourly rate for hospital staff to collect biospecimens is $100, unloaded, and it is estimated that biospecimen collection will take, on average, 0.5 hours per birth.
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From page 152... ...
is $4,000 per interviewer in year 1, $250 annually thereafter, based on experience in the Vanguard Study. We assume a 3-year lifetime for this equipment, making the 5 Difficult cases often require repeated visits due to broken appointments, as well as visits to determine where the respondent is located and to secure additional locating information from former neighbors.
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From page 153... ...
We do not budget overall field management and central direction as the scope for such work is unspecified as yet. Specimen Processing • No lab work will be done on the environmental samples; lab work will be done on 5 percent of the venous blood samples for quality control only.
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From page 154... ...
• Fraction in the prenatal protocol group -- Changing respondents from being recruited at providers and administered prenatal interviews rather than being recruited at birth and not receiving prenatal inter views increases project costs by $30 million for every 10 percentage point increase in the fraction receiving the prenatal protocol. This cost reflects both the cost of recruitment and the cost of prenatal inter views, both to women who enroll in the study and the women who attrite before delivery.
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From page 155... ...
$1,631 ($135) 89,179 Maximum prenatal recruitment plus preconception supplemental sample, and convenience sample (Model 2)
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From page 156... ...
TABLE B-2 Year-by-Year Cost Comparisons Across Models (in millions of $) Year Baseline Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 1 $ 62 $ 70 $ 62 $ 53 $ 60 $ 56 $ 59 $ 61 2 127 142 129 110 124 115 122 126 3 206 230 212 180 204 188 201 206 4 307 340 317 271 306 283 304 308 5 294 320 306 266 296 276 295 296 6 272 291 281 251 274 259 275 272 7 227 238 234 216 229 221 233 226 Total 1,495 1,631 1,542 1,348 1,492 1,398 1,488 1,495 NOTE: See text for discussion.
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From page 157... ...
Attempting to spread recruitment costs over even more years may reduce the peak but increase total program costs. Questionable Assumptions The panel questioned only two Program Office assumptions as being inconsistent with the experience of the consultants who conducted the cost analysis for us, recruiting costs and need for follow-up.
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From page 158... ...
The Program Office assumes this would not be necessary, but we judge that the many distractions surrounding a birth, the possibility of rapid discharge from the hospital before the in-hospital interview is conducted, and the possibility some mothers simply would not get around to collecting environmental samples all suggested we allow for the need for an in-home visit shortly after birth. Limitations of Our Cost Model Apart from limiting its estimates to only the field costs of the NCS, our cost analysis has other noteworthy limitations.
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From page 159... ...
There are also regulatory risks. If regulations to which the NCS is subject become more stringent, this could easily generate unpredictable cost increases.
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