Data & Research

The Child Nutrition Program Operations Study II (CN-OPS II) is a multiyear study that provides the  Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) with information on current State Agency (SA) and school food authority (SFA) policies, practices, and needs related to school nutrition service operations, financial management, meal counting, training and professional standards, food service equipment, and technology. Results are used to inform Child Nutrition program management and policy development. Data was collected between May and October 2016 from all State Child Nutrition (CN) directors and a nationally representative stratified sample of SFA directors through on-line surveys. Most information refers to school year 2015-2016.

The Study of Food Safety Needs of Adult Day Care Centers in the Child and Adult Care Food Program report identified and evaluated food safety knowledge gaps and education needs of adult day care center program operators. Overall, this study provides information on knowledge gaps related to food safety practices in adult day care centers and illuminates the best way for center staff to receive future food safety training and information support.

This study provides current information on adoption of scanning technology among small SNAP-authorized retailers to assess readiness for meeting the Farm Bill requirement, barriers and benefits to adopting scanning technologies, and costs for nonadopting retailers to comply with this requirement.

The demonstration of Direct Certification with Medicaid for Free and Reduced-Price Meals (DCM-F/RP) allows authorized States and school districts to use information from Medicaid data files to identify students eligible to receive free or reduced-price (F/RP) National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP) meals. The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct a study of the first two years of this demonstration to describe the implementation process and explore the effects on certification, participation, Federal reimbursements, and State administrative costs. This report presents the findings from the first year of the demonstration evaluation, school year (SY) 2016–2017.

The Evaluation of the School Meal Data Collection Process study describes and evaluates the methodologies and processes used by schools, school food authorities (SFAs), and state agencies to collect and report data on three Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) forms used for the federal school meal programs: the Report of School Program Operations (FNS-10), the SFA Verification Collection Report (FNS-742), and the State Agency Direct Certification Rate Data Element Report (FNS-834). In addition to describing the processes, the study identifies potential sources of error when completing the three forms and provides useful practices and recommendations for improving data collection processes.

This study is the first nationally representative, comprehensive assessment of the school meal programs since the updated nutrition standards for school meals were phased in beginning School Year 2012-2013. A study methodology report that describes the study design, sampling and data collection and a Summary Report that provides a brief overview of the study and key findings from the various reports are also available.

This report describes the feasibility of a modeling approach to forecast tiering error rates based on prior data, in lieu of annual assessments of misclassified FDCHs. It presents estimates for forecasted rates and associated improper payments for FDCHs for each fiscal year (FY) from 2016 to 2020. Due to data limitations, the report concludes that building a reliable model is not possible with the currently available data and estimates produced by the models cannot be used for IPERIA reporting.

This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies (LEAs) to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications. The 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act required LEAs to establish systems to directly certify children from households that receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by school year (SY) 2008-2009. This report presents information on the outcomes of direct certification for SY 2015-2016 and SY 2016-2017.

SNAP Education (SNAP-Ed) is the nutrition education and obesity prevention component of SNAP; its goal is to improve the likelihood that persons eligible for SNAP will make nutritious food choices within a limited budget and choose physically active lifestyles consistent with the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the USDA food guidance.

WIC Participant and Program Characteristics 2016 (PC 2016) summarizes the demographic characteristics of participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nationwide in April 2016. It includes information on participant income and nutrition risk characteristics, estimates breastfeeding initiation rates for WIC infants, and describes WIC members of migrant farm-worker families. PC 2016 is the most recent in a series of reports generated from WIC State management information system data biennially since 1992.