Pre-testing of ACF Data Collection Activities

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeks renewal of this generic data collection development clearance to allow us to use samples of more than nine participants in applying methods useful for identifying data collection material and procedural problems, and pretesting questions and procedures. This will allow for identification of solutions and measuring the relative effectiveness of alternative solutions and for identification of appropriate questions to meet the intended purposes and uses of data collection efforts. The ACF Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) studies ACF programs, and the populations they serve, through rigorous research and evaluation projects. These include evaluations of existing programs, evaluations of innovative approaches to helping low-income children and families, research syntheses and descriptive and exploratory studies. This umbrella generic was originally written and has been used for pretesting research and evaluation data collection efforts primarily by OPRE. ACF program offices also collect data for a variety of purposes including but not limited to performance reporting and monitoring of funding recipients; understanding of the populations served including who they are, what their needs are, and how we can serve them better; program and service improvement feedback; research and evaluation; etc. For this reason, ACF proposes to broaden the scope of this generic to include pretesting of data elements used on information collections that are not specifically for research and evaluation. This could be used to inform a variety of data collection efforts in ACF to allow for consistent data requests across program offices that are high quality and appropriate for program office needs and for respondents who represent ACF program populations. This generic clearance will continue to allow us to identify if and when an information collection may be simplified for respondents, respondent burden may be reduced, among other possible improvements. The work completed under this generic is intended to be informative in nature; the studies may be iterative, as variation in questions or procedures are proposed, evaluated, and retested. The pretesting of data collection materials is necessary to improve future ACF information collections, resulting in higher quality data with the best possible utility for the government and its stakeholders, when appropriate. The core methodology and target populations will be consistent and burden caps and token of appreciation structure are proposed in this request. Updates to individual GenICs and the umbrella SSA are currently being submitted to make updates in response to recent presidential actions in 2025.

The latest form for Pre-testing of ACF Data Collection Activities expires 2027-10-31 and can be found here.

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