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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Increase the proportion of children whose family read to them at least 4 days per week — EMC‑02 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About the National Data  |  Methodology  |  History

About the National Data

Data

Data Source:  National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), HRSA/MCHB

Baseline: 58.3 percent of children aged 5 years and under had parents or caregivers who reported that someone in their family read to the child 4 or more days in the past week in 2016-17

Target: 63.2 percent

Numerator
Number of children aged 5 years and under whose parent or caregiver reported that someone in their family read to the child 4 or more days in the past week.
Denominator
Number of children aged 5 years and under.
Target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
Target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.10.
1
Target-setting method justification
Trend data were not available for this objective. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.1. This method was used because the Healthy People 2030 Workgroup Subject Matter Experts expected a conservative increase based on the trend of historical data for this measure before the survey methods changed. While Healthy People targets are applicable at the national level, this target will remain more stable when calculating targets by state.

Methodology

Questions used to obtain the national baseline data

(For additional information, please visit the data source page linked above.)

From the 2016 and 2017 National Survey of Children's Health:

Numerator and Denominator:
DURING THE PAST WEEK, how many days did you or other family members read to this child?
  1. 0 days
  2. 1-3 days
  3. 4-6 days
  4. Every day

History

Comparable HP2020 objective
Modified, which includes core objectives that are continuing from Healthy People 2020 but underwent a change in measurement.
Changes between HP2020 and HP2030
This objective differs from Healthy People 2020 objective EMC-2.3 in that EMC-2.3 tracked children aged 0 to 5 years whose parents reported that someone in their family read to the child every day in the past week while this objective tracks children aged 0 to 5 years whose parents report that someone in their family read to the child 4 or more days in the past week. In addition, the National Survey of Children's Health was redesigned in 2016.
Revision History
Revised. 

In 2021 the text for this objective was revised to more closely align with the survey question being used. The objective statement was revised from "Increase the proportion of children whose parents read to them at least 4 days per week" to "Increase the proportion of children whose family read to them at least 4 days per week". In the baseline statement 'parents' was revised to 'parents or caregivers', and in the numerator text 'parents' was revised to 'parent or caregiver'. The data displayed, including the baseline and target values were not affected by these changes.

1. Effect size h=0.1 was chosen to correspond with 10% improvement from a baseline of 50%.