# Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment Request; National Survey of Children's Health
The Department of Commerce will submit the following information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed and continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the *Federal Register* on December 5, 2025 during a 60-day comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.
*Agency:* U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce.
*Title:* National Survey of Children's Health.
*OMB Control Number:* 0607-0990.
*Form Number(s):* NSCH-S1 (English Screener), CH-S2-2A (Screener Card), NSCH-T1 (English Topical for 0- to 5-year-old children), NSCH-T2 (English Topical for 6- to 11-year-old children), NSCH-T3 (English Topical for 12- to 17-year-old children), NSCH-S-S1 (Spanish Screener), NSCH-S-T1 (Spanish Topical for 0- to 5-year-old children), NSCH-S-T2 (Spanish Topical for 6- to 11-year-old children), and NSCH-S-T3 (Spanish Topical for 12- to 17-year-old children).
*Type of Request:* Regular submission, Request for a Revision of a Currently Approved Collection.
*Number of Respondents:* 66,879 for the screener only, 5,000 for the screener card, and 54,824 for the combined screener and topical, for a total of 126,703 respondents.
*Average Hours per Response:* 1 minute per screener card, 5 minutes per screener response, and 35-36 minutes per topical response, which in total is approximately 40-42 minutes for households with eligible children.
*Burden Hours:* 42,553.
*Needs and Uses:* The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) enables the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) along with supplemental sponsoring agencies, states, and other data users to produce national and state-based estimates on the health and well-being of children, their families, and their communities as well as estimates of the prevalence and impact of children with special health care needs.
Data will be collected using one of two modes. The first mode is a web instrument survey that contains the screener and topical instruments. The web instrument first will take the respondent through the screener questions. If the household screens into the study, the respondent will be taken directly into one of the three age-based topical sets of questions. The second mode is a mailout/mailback of a self-administered paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI) screener instrument followed by a separate mailout/mailback of a PAPI age-based topical instrument. A PAPI screener card instrument will also be used to ease the burden for households without children by eliminating the need to send back an 8-page paper screener instrument that indicates the household doesn't have children. Also planned for 2026 NSCH is the collection of respondent contact information on both the PAPI screener and screener card to better target households with children. Examples of better targeting households with children would include using respondent information to send more personalized contact attempts through mail, email, or auto-dialer operations.
The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) is a large-scale (sample size is approximately 375,000 addresses) national survey with approximately 42,000 of those addresses included as part of nine separate state-based or region-based oversamples. As in prior cycles of the NSCH, there remain two key, non-experimental design elements. The first non-experimental design element is the use of an unconditional incentive ($5) in the initial screener and topical invitations. For the initial screener invitation, 90% of sampled addresses receive the cash incentive; the remaining 10% (the control) do not receive an incentive. This approach is used to consistently monitor the effectiveness of the cash incentive each cycle. The second non-experimental design element is a data collection procedure based on the block group-level paper-only response probability used to identify households (30% of the sample) that would be more likely to respond by paper and send them a paper questionnaire in the initial mailing and every nonresponse follow-up mailing.
The 2026 NSCH will again include a web targeted secondary unconditional screener incentive envelope test that will be sent to a subset of the sample that started the web questionnaire but did not finish. Prior cycles of the survey have included a $5 unconditional cash incentive with both the initial screener mailing as well as the initial paper topical mailing as outlined in the paragraph above. The incentive has proven to be a cost-effective intervention for increasing survey response and reducing nonresponse bias. The test will continue to be used to evaluate envelope and delivery method effectiveness (FedEx vs. visible incentive). Preliminary results of this test conducted in the 2025 NSCH indicate the use of visible incentive envelopes (USPS) also helps to boost response and is less costly than FedEx. Since 2025 NSCH data collection is still ongoing, we would like to continue this test again in 2026 for further evaluation purposes.
*Affected Public:* Individuals or households.
*Frequency:* The 2026 collection is the eleventh administration of the NSCH. It is an annual survey, with a new sample drawn for each administration.
*Respondent's Obligation:* Voluntary.
*Legal Authority:* Census Authority: Title 13, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 8(b) (13 U.S.C. 8(b)).
*HRSA MCHB Authority:* Section 501(a)(2) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 701).
United States Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Nutrition Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO); National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) Division of Human Development and Disability (DHDD) and Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders (DBDID); and Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP) Authority: Public Health Service Act, Section 301, 42 U.S.C. 241 and 301(a), 307, and 399G of the PHS 42 U.S.C. 241A, 242l, 280e-11, as amended.
United States Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Services Authority: Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, 42 U.S.C. 1755(a)(3).
This information collection request may be viewed at *www.reginfo.gov* . Follow the instructions to view the Department of Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of this notice on the following website *www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain* . Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function and entering either the title of the collection or the OMB Control Number 0607-0990.
Sheleen Dumas,
Departmental PRA Compliance Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, Commerce Department.