The Analysis of the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and Food Needs of Non-participating Children was designed to determine why children who attended elementary school during the 2003-2004 school year and were eligible for free or reduced-price meals did not participate in SFSP. For the purposes of this report, children who are eligible for free or reduced-priced meals will be referred to as "SFSP-eligible children."
The target sample for this study was a nonprobability sample of 200 households with elementary school-aged, SFSP-eligible children. Results of the survey cannot be generalized nationwide due to the limited sample size and the restricting of sampling to households in areas of Miami, FL; Kansas City, MO; Oakland, CA; and Salisbury, MD. Eighty-three percent of the households included non-participating SFSP-eligible children while 17 percent included participating SFSP-eligible children