Page 11

Page 11 A sampling frame with contact information for 1,452 child care providers was obtained from the Mississippi State Department of Health Bureau of Licensure and Regulations and provided to the SCL by MDHS. In the process of administering the survey, 167 child care providers were excluded due to closure; disconnected phone numbers; or being a duplicate, group or home-based facility, or Head Start/no fee provider. The final sampling frame included 1,285 qualified licensed (or license-exempt) center-based providers. The methodology described below was approved by Mississippi State University’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research prior to data collection, and each member of the research team was trained in human subjects research. An email was sent to licensed providers by MDHS to inform providers that the Market Rate Survey was being conducted and to encourage participation in the survey. The survey was administered between February and April 2024 by the SSRC’s Wolfgang Freese Survey Research Laboratory (SRL) using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). An initial call was made by SRL staff to schedule an appointment for the interview, and a follow-up call was made to conduct the interview. For providers who did not answer when called, the SRL left a message that additional attempts would be made to contact them. In response to many providers being unable to keep their scheduled appointments, a second email was sent by MSDH to encourage provider participation. In advance of their appointments, providers were sent a list of documents they might need to answer survey questions, such as enrollment records, tuition rates, and operational expenses. Providers were also informed that they would receive a $25 incentive in the form of a gift card from Amazon or Walmart upon completion of the survey and that they would be entered into a drawing for $500 in gift cards. In response to a continued low cooperation rate, a second method for collecting center- based MRS surveys was established and implemented in early April. Due to the busy schedules of providers, the SCL recognized a need to provide a phone line so providers could call at their convenience to complete the survey. This “hotline” was operated by SCL staff. Flyers were emailed to providers to inform them about the hotline number. When providers called the hotline to request an appointment to complete the survey, calendar invitations, reminder emails, and reminder texts were sent. Additionally, a third method for collecting center-based MRS surveys was established. The center-based MRS instrument was loaded into Qualtrics in the form of an online survey, and the survey link was mailed to all remaining center-based providers mid-April. Throughout the January-April recruitment period, SCL and MDHS partners assisted in the promotion of the MRS though listservs and social media. Center-based Data Collection