[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 235 (Wednesday, December 7, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 76422-76424]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-31389]
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Food and Drug Administration
[Docket No. FDA-2011-N-0858]
Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection;
Comment Request; Experimental Study on Comparing Data Obtained From
Landline Telephone and Cell Phone Surveys
AGENCY: Food and Drug Administration, HHS.
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing an
opportunity for public comment on the proposed collection of certain
information by the Agency. Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995
(the PRA), Federal Agencies are required to publish notice in the
Federal Register concerning each proposed collection of information and
to allow 60 days for public comment in response to the notice. This
notice solicits comments on a study entitled ``Experimental Study on
Comparing Data Obtained From Landline Telephone and Cell Phone
Surveys.''
DATES: Submit either electronic or written comments on the collection
of information by February 6, 2012.
ADDRESSES: Submit electronic comments on the collection of information
to http://www.regulations.gov. Submit written comments on the
collection of information to the Division of Dockets Management (HFA-
305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061,
Rockville, MD 20852. All comments should be identified with the docket
number found in brackets in the heading of this document.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Denver Presley, II, Office of
Information Management, Food and Drug Administration, 1350 Piccard Dr.,
PI50-400B, Rockville, MD 20850, (301) 796-3793.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Under the PRA (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520), Federal
Agencies must obtain approval from the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) for each collection of information they conduct or sponsor.
``Collection of information'' is defined in 44 U.S.C. 3502(3) and 5 CFR
1320.3(c) and includes Agency requests or requirements that members of
the public submit reports, keep records, or provide information to a
third party. Section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the PRA (44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A))
requires Federal Agencies to provide a 60-day notice in the Federal
Register concerning each proposed collection of information before
submitting the collection to OMB for approval. To comply with this
requirement, FDA is publishing notice of the proposed collection of
information set forth in this document.
With respect to the following collection of information, FDA
invites comments on these topics: (1) Whether the proposed collection
of information is necessary for the proper performance of FDA's
functions, including whether the information will have practical
utility; (2) the accuracy of FDA's estimate of the burden of the
proposed collection of information, including the validity of the
methodology and assumptions used; (3) ways to enhance the quality,
utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (4) ways
to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents,
including through the use of automated collection techniques, when
appropriate, and other forms of information technology.
Experimental Study on Comparing Data Obtained From Landline Telephone
and Cell Phone Surveys--(OMB Control Number 0910-NEW)
I. Background
Since the early 1980s, the Center for Food Safety and Applied
Nutrition at FDA has been commissioning several waves of two national
consumer surveys, the Food Safety Survey (FSS) and the Health and Diet
Survey (HDS), to gather data on consumer knowledge, perceptions, and
behaviors regarding food safety and nutrition. The purposes of the
surveys are three-fold: (1) To generate nationally representative
estimates of knowledge, perception, and practice of interest at a given
point in time; (2) to track trends of the estimates over time; and (3)
to understand the relationships among knowledge, perceptions, and
practices regarding food safety and nutrition and how these relate to
demographic characteristics.
Traditionally, all waves of the surveys have been administered via
landline telephones and have used the random digit dialing (RDD)
technique to recruit national samples of adults (18 years old or above)
from households with landline telephone numbers. A noticeable
phenomenon that has appeared in our recent surveys is a precipitous
decline of younger respondents in completed interviews. For example,
the proportion of respondents in the 18 to 29 age group for the FSS has
dropped from 17 percent in 2001 to 11 percent in 2006 to only 4 percent
in 2010; the corresponding proportion for the HDS has gone from 14
percent in 2002, to 15 percent in 2004, to only 6 percent in 2008.
One possible reason for the decline is the rapid adoption of cell
phones in recent years. During the second half of 2010, 28 percent of
American adults lived in households with only wireless service
(``wireless-only households'' or ``cell-phone only households''),
compared to 15 percent in the second half of 2007 and 5 percent in the
second half of 2004 (Ref. 1). During the second half of 2010, 17
percent of adults lived in households that received all or almost all
calls on cell phones despite having a landline phone (``wireless-mostly
households'' or ``cell-phone mostly households''), an increase of 3
percentage points from the first half of 2008 (Ref. 1). Thus, the
number of adults reachable by landline phone calls has decreased in
recent years. The rate of cell phone adoption, however, has been uneven
among adults with different demographic characteristics. In 2010,
adults living in wireless-only households were more likely to be 18 to
34 year olds, living in poorer households, without a college or higher
educational degree, or Hispanics or Latinos (Ref. 1). Meanwhile, adults
who live in landline households differ from those who live in wireless-
only households as well those in wireless-mostly households (Ref. 2),
and the demographic characteristics of adults living in wireless-mostly
households are much less diverse than that of adults living in
wireless-only households (Ref. 1).
The under-representation of wireless-only or wireless-mostly
adults, especially those in younger age groups, in landline surveys can
affect national estimates of the prevalence of certain
[[Page 76423]]
consumer perceptions, knowledge or behaviors and understanding of the
relationships between certain survey responses and demographic
characteristics. For example, previous research found different
prevalence rates of drinking and smoking between respondents reached on
a landline call versus respondents from wireless-only households (Ref.
1). Wireless-mostly adults were less likely than landline adults to say
their health is fair or poor and were less likely to be a current
smoker than wireless-only adults (Ref. 2). Voigt et al. (Ref. 3)
reported that cell-phone users were less likely to have fathered or
given birth to a child than their landline telephone counterparts. The
differences observed in these studies are pertinent and potentially
problematic for the HDS and FSS because past surveys have shown that
age variations were associated with, among other things, consumers'
knowledge of dietary fats, and awareness and concern about pesticide
and antibiotic residues (Refs. 4 and 5).
Thus, our recent surveys may have become vulnerable to a
noncoverage problem due to the fact that many eligible respondents are
not included in the survey samples because they do not own landline
phones or because they receive calls only or mostly on cell phones.
Adults living in wireless-only and wireless-mostly households are less
likely to appear in landline telephone samples and often possess
characteristics that differ from those of adults in landline
households. Thus, a telephone survey that still relies exclusively on
landline phone calls to interview respondents may not produce results
that are reliable and valid (Refs. 2 and 6), may not yield results that
are comparable to results from past landline surveys when this
noncoverage problem was absent, or both.
One common approach to addressing potential impacts of cell phone
use on landline telephone survey results is to supplement a landline
telephone survey with a cell phone survey to achieve a wider coverage
of population in the sample of respondents. Existing evidence on the
usefulness of this approach varies between national estimates and
population subgroup estimates. Many studies conducted around the mid-
2000s (for example, Ref. 7), when the use of cell phones was not as
common as today, and a 2007 study (Ref. 2) suggested that general
population estimates of certain social and political attitudes, voting
behavior, and media use and attitudes did not always vary when a
landline survey was supplemented or was not supplemented with a cell-
phone only survey, especially when the response to a landline survey
was weighted to reflect population characteristics. On the other hand,
this research also suggested that among young adults and low-income
adults, estimates of certain health-related behaviors, such as smoking
and binge drinking, differ between those living in households with and
without landlines (Ref. 8). In addition, young adults who had a
landline phone were less likely to report drinking alcohol or to agree
that marijuana smoking is acceptable (Ref. 9). We are, however, not
aware of any research that has examined whether food safety or
nutrition related perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors differ when
landline telephone surveys miss respondents who are not reachable by
landline telephone calls.
Therefore, we are concerned that the diminishing survey
participation among consumers who are not easily reached by landline
telephones may lead to unreliable or biased estimates of critical
information and the relationships among knowledge, perceptions, and
other food safety and nutrition related variables. These concerns
warrant a systematic examination of the impacts of cell phone use on
the quality of the FSS and HDS data.
The objective of this data collection is to provide data for an
experimental study that compares demographic distributions in and
responses to selected FSS and HDS questions by samples of respondents
drawn from an overlapping dual frame (Ref. 6), i.e., two overlapping
sampling frames: (1) A list-assisted landline telephone frame and (2) a
cell phone frame. Using this approach, we will not screen out any
households or individuals because of their type(s) of telephone service
(landline or cell phone). The study plans to interview 2,000
respondents in English, half of them (1,000) using a 10-minute HDS
questionnaire and half of them (1,000) using a 10-minute FSS
questionnaire. Each respondent will be randomly assigned to one of the
questionnaires. The target distributions within each of the HDS and FSS
samples are: 700 respondents who are drawn from the landline frame and
complete the questionnaire on a landline telephone; 150 respondents who
are drawn from the cell phone frame and complete the questionnaire on a
cell phone, regardless of whether they are wireless-only or wireless-
mostly; and 150 respondents who are drawn from the cell phone frame,
complete the questionnaire on a cell phone, and do not have a landline
phone to receive personal calls.
The HDS questionnaire will focus on knowledge of dietary fats, use
of food labels, awareness of diet-health relationships, and use and
understanding of dietary supplements. The FSS questionnaire will focus
on perceptions of general food safety risks, food handling practices,
perceived personal vulnerability to food safety risks, consumption of
risky foods, and awareness of mercury and fish. All questions have been
asked in previous surveys.
The Agency will use the study to assess the impacts of cell phone
use on population estimates of nutrition and food safety related
perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. The assessment will help the
Agency determine whether and how future administrations of the FSS and
HDS should be adjusted to produce reliable, valid, and historically
comparable results in response to the growing prevalence of cell phone
use.
FDA estimates the burden of this collection of information as
follows:
Table 1--Estimated Annual Reporting Burden \1\
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Number of
Activity Number of responses per Total annual Average burden per response Total hours
respondents respondent responses
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Pretest.................................... 10 1 10 .167 2
(10 minutes).......................
Survey..................................... 2,000 1 2,000 .167 334
(10 minutes).......................
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Total.................................. ................ ................ ................ ................................... 336
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\1\ There are no capital costs or operating and maintenance costs associated with this collection of information.
[[Page 76424]]
II. References
The following references have been placed on display in the
Division of Dockets Management (see ADDRESSES) and may be seen by
interested persons between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
(FDA has verified the Web site addresses, but FDA is not responsible
for any subsequent changes to the Web sites after this document
publishes in the Federal Register.)
1. Blumberg, S.J., and J.V. Luke, ``Wireless Substitution: Early
Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey,
July-December 2010,'' (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm), National
Center for Health Statistics, June 2011.
2. Lee, S., J.M. Brick, E.R. Brown, et al., ``Growing Cell-Phone
Population and Noncoverage Bias in Traditional Random Digit Dialing
Telephone Health Surveys,'' Health Services Research, 45: 1121-1139,
2010.
3. Voigt, L.F., S.M. Schwartz, D.R. Doody, et al., ``Feasibility of
Including Cellular Telephone Numbers in Random Digit Dialing for
Epidemiologic Case-Control Studies,'' American Journal of
Epidemiology, 173: 118-126, 2011.
4. Yen, S.T., K.L. Jensen, and C.-T.J. Lin, ``Awareness and
Perceived Risk of Pesticide and Antibiotic Residues in Food:
Socioeconomic Variations Among U.S. Consumers,'' Food Protection
Trends, 26: 654-661, 2006.
5. Lin, C.-T.J. and S.T. Yen, ``Knowledge of Dietary Facts Among
U.S. Consumers,'' Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 110:
613-618, 2010.
6. American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), ``New
Considerations for Survey Researchers When Planning and Conducting
RDD Telephone Surveys in the United States With Respondents Reached
via Cell Phone Numbers,'' (http://www.aapor.org/Cell_Phone_Task_Force_Report.htm), 2010.
7. Keeter, S., ``The Impact of Cellular Phone Noncoverage Bias on
Polling in the 2004 Presidential Election,'' Public Opinion
Quarterly, 70: 88-98, 2006.
8. Blumberg, S.J. and J.V. Luke, ``Reevaluating the Need for Concern
Regarding Noncoverage Bias in Landline Surveys,'' American Journal
of Public Health, 99: 1806-1810, 2009.
9. Keeter, S., C. Kennedy, A. Clark, et al., ``What's Missing From
National Landline RDD Surveys? The Impact of the Growing Cell-Only
Population,'' Public Opinion Quarterly, 71: 772-792, 2007.
Dated: December 2, 2011.
Leslie Kux,
Acting Assistant Commissioner for Policy.
[FR Doc. 2011-31389 Filed 12-6-11; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4160-01-P