Parent Survey (CCHAPS)

A key element within our Community Health Needs Assessment is the Community-wide Children's Health Assessment & Planning Survey (CCHAPS). CCHAPS is a household survey of parents and caregivers of children ages 0 -14 to assess the caregiver's perspective about children's health in our service region of Denton, Hood, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant, and Wise Counties.

CCHAPS 2021 which is now in data collection, will also include Collin and Grayson Counties and has been extended to include households with children ages 0-17.

Overview of the 2021 Parent Survey

Survey data available upon request

2009, 2012, 2015 and 2018 Community-wide Children's Health Assessment and Planning Surveys

The survey data available upon request was collected by ETC Institute as directed by Cook Children's Health Care System. The survey data was a result of a random, mailed survey to households with children 0-14 years of age. It includes households in Tarrant, Denton, Johnson, Parker, Hood and Wise counties.

View 2018 KidBit Data Summaries

Suggested citation when referencing CCHAPS data files:

Community-wide Children's Health Assessment and Planning Survey (year of data). Cook Children's Health Care System; Fort Worth, Texas; or CCHAPS (year of data) at www.centerforchildrenshealth.org accessed (month/year).

Specific CCHAPS data and cross-tabulations are available upon request. Please contact Becki Hale at becki.hale@cookchildrens.org for data inquiries.

Frequently asked questions about CCHAPS

CCHAPS is the acronym for Community-wide Children's Health Assessment and Planning Survey. CCHAPS plays a key role in our Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) and is a household survey of parents and caregivers of children ages 0 -14 to assess the caregiver's perspective about children's health in our service region of Denton, Hood, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant, and Wise Counties. Our 2021 survey will also include Collin and Grayson Counties and has been extended to households with children ages 0-17.

For CCHAPS 2021:

The 56-question survey is mailed to a representative sample of households with options for primary caregivers to respond by mail, online, or toll-free phone. The survey is available in English and Spanish.
This parent survey contains trend questions from previous years and new questions to assess social determinants of health, COVID-19, and equitable access.
Questions align with national and state data, when applicable; Some questions from prior years revised to align with national and state data benchmarks such as National Survey for Children's Health, Healthy People 2030, Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance, US Gallup Poll, Mental Health America, and Safe Kids Worldwide

CCHAPS was administered by ETC Institute on behalf of Cook Children's Health Care System.

All forms of research have limitations which is why methodology is especially important.

Cook Children's contracts with research experts to collect our CHNA data so that high standards of methodology are practiced, mitigating limitations as much as possible. Some limitations of our CHNA research include:

Survey provides the parent's perspective:

Responses to this survey reflect the parent's or other caregiver's point of view, which may or may not be a reflection of the actual situation. Parents may be unconsciously concerned that certain responses may not reflect well on their parenting practices, or they may not actually have first-hand knowledge of certain behaviors/situations. However, for the purposes of community education and awareness efforts it is sometimes helpful to know the level of knowledge respondents have on a particular issue.

Survey data is descriptive:

Survey research is a descriptive research design since the questions are only asked once at a particular point in time. Therefore while analysts may draw associations between variables when appropriate, conclusions about a cause-and-effect relationship require an experimental research design.

Focus group findings are contextual:

The sample size of parents participating in face-to-face interviews or focus groups is considerably smaller than the parent survey sample size. For this reason, the findings from these methods should serve as additional qualitative insight into the parent survey findings rather than a statistically valid comparison. Limitations of focus group methodology in general may also affect data quality.

The overall results for questions that are included on the survey for the random sample of households have a precision of at least +/-1.3% at the 95% level of confidence.

Margin of Error. How much error we can live with --the number of people who respond a certain way will always fall within a range of 1.3% less or more than the statistic quoted.
Confidence level. How sure we can be --if we repeat the survey 100 times, we would expect the same answer 95 out of 100 times.

For CCHAPS 2021, is the sample size large enough to be representative of the eight-county service region?

The sample size is very large (5,000+) to ensure our data is representative of the diverse population within our region---representative in each county and representative for different race/ethnic groups, etc.

Our sample is address-based and selected at random from households that are likely to have children under age 18. The number of households selected for the survey will initially be 5x the goal for each area. We also oversample respondents in hard-to-reach areas and less responsive demographic groups.

For comparison purposes, the 2019 National Survey of Children's Health utilizes a representative sample size between 600 –620 for the state of Texas.

So we believe our data accurately reflects what parents report despite limitations inherent in all research. Sometimes there are logical explanations for why data doesn't seem to reflect what we "know" to be true. Sometimes it's easy to assume that the population in a particular work setting represents the total population of children. Our CHNA survey is representative of all parents in the region with children ages 0 –17 (not just those with a particular health issue or those with low incomes, etc.).

Questions or comments

If you have any questions or would like more information about our program, please email Becki Hale.

Parent Survey (CCHAPS)

Survey data available upon request

Frequently asked questions about CCHAPS

What is CCHAPS?

Who administers the survey?

What are the limitations of the survey?

Precision and accuracy of the survey?

Is the sample size large enough?

Questions or comments