Your address was selected at random from among all home addresses in Chicago. This process ensures that parents from every Chicago neighborhood are represented in the research results. It also means that some households that receive this invitation may not have children living in them.

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is asking parents of children under age 18 to tell us what they think about issues they face as parents. Some of the survey topics include car seat safety and social media. Our goal is to build a panel of 2,000 Chicago parents of children under age 18 representing all Chicago neighborhoods to take occasional surveys.

The survey is being conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, in partnership with Lurie Children’s, one of the top children’s hospitals in the United States. NORC is an objective, non-partisan research institution that delivers reliable data and rigorous science to guide critical decisions. NORC has been conducting impactful, unbiased research for nearly 80 years for organizations such as Consumer Reports, the American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, The Associated Press, Harvard University, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and many more.

The survey allows one qualified parent, foster parent, or legal guardian, age 18 years or older with at least one child under the age of 18 living at your address at least six months in a year, to complete the survey.

Participation is easy. You can take the survey from a desktop or laptop computer, tablet, or smartphone. Just enter the Access Code printed on the invitation letter or postcard to complete the survey. You may also complete the survey by phone—call (877) 832-0397, provide the Access Code from your letter, and an interviewer will ask you the questions by phone. You can skip any questions in a survey, skip a future survey, or stop taking these surveys at any time.

After you complete the survey, we will give you $15! Besides the $15 reward, your opinions will help ensure that community views are part of our city’s conversation about child health.

We will give you $15 in your choice of an Amazon.com or Target gift card sent to your email address.

We are required to protect your confidentiality and your opinions:

• Only NORC researchers who are conducting the survey will have access to your personal contact information.
• We report the results in summary form only; we protect your privacy by grouping your opinions with those of many other residents in your city.
• We only use your contact information for this study; we do not share your contact information with any other entity except to send you your rewards.
• We store your personal information apart from your answers so there is no way to identify you as a participant.

This study uses a technique called Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS). RDS has been used in the past to study more specialized groups who can be harder to reach using traditional survey sampling methods. RDS allows us to reach more people in these specialized groups by relying on you, the participant, to help spread the word throughout your social network. With your help, we’ll be able to grow the Voices Panel to over 2,000 Chicago households.

Read more about Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago here: www.luriechildrens.org
Read a Message about the study from Lurie Children’s here.