Page Last Updated: May 14, 2026

Transitions in Care Screener🔗

Table Name	`sed_cg_tic_screener`
Construct	Documents when children spend time living in non-parental care/change in who provides primary care
Study Visits	All visits beginning at V02
Administration	Child-specific: Yes Respondent: Original Consented Parent or Alternate Caregiver Method: RA administered via phone (5 min estimated duration)
Quality Control	Monthly data consistency checks to identify discrepancies across submissions. Resolution of contradictory site responses, such as inconsistencies in site responses where reported answers about whether a TIC had or had not “ever” occurred conflicted with the information recorded in TIC Screeners. Sites were contacted for clarification and correction. Follow-up on data entry issues, including missing or incomplete responses, conflicting information across multiple forms, and TIC being filled out for a later time point than when the transition occurred (e.g., V06 TIC available for TIC that occurred at V02).

TIC information alone or cross-tabulated with other HBCD data can result in cells containing data from 1 to 10 persons (“small cells”). Small cells increase the risk that a participant can be identified. Under the NBDC Data Use Certification agreement (DUC, Terms and Conditions # 5), you agreed NOT to use data from NBDC in a manner that establishes the individual identity of study participants or establishes identities of their relatives. The DUC also prohibits you from publishing or otherwise disseminating derived data that could help identify persons. To help maintain anonymity, you agreed to use a minimum cell threshold of 10 in publications or other public reporting of the data and analyses.

Typically, there is only one birth parent TIC Screener form per timepoint. However, if a TIC occurred, there is sometimes one TIC screener filled out when talking to the birth parent and a second screener filled out when talking to the alternate caregiver. This is not an error but reflects how these data were collected. If a TIC occurred, another possibility is that there is only an alternate caregiver TIC form (and not a birth parent form because we were unable to get in touch with the birth parent).

Instrument Details🔗

The Transitions in Care (TIC) Screener captures children’s transitions to formal and informal non-parental care at each timepoint starting with Visit 2. It is designed to capture children’s formal and informal transitions to non-parental care, including living in foster care, kinship care, and other non-parental care arrangements, either temporary or permanent. The TIC Screener is completed by a research assistant (RA) at each site at the time of scheduling a participant, usually based on phone calls. Information can be entered into the profile of the child, original consented parent, and/or alternate caregiver.

References🔗

Radel, L., & Bramlett, M. (2014). Children in nonparental care: Findings from the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children’s Health. ASPE, DHHS. https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/children-nonparental-care-findings-2011-2012-national-survey-childrens-health-0