Research and Data Analysis Services

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), Contracts Management Division (CMD), intends to award a sole-source, firm fixed price contract to Mathematica, Inc for non-personal services to produce estimates of the factors most closely associated with the decision to participate in CACFP among childcare providers who principally serve infants and toddlers, and validate the CACFP participation variable in the NSECE against FNS aggregate levels of CACFP participation at the State and provider type levels.

This requirement of additional analyses is a follow on to 12319823F0028 Literature Review and Data Analysis. The extension of this work builds on previous analysis using the same platform for accessing the data and the same data files that defined the prior sample and constructed variables. Both the data access and the creation of data files were established in the prior contract with the intended contractor, and it would be very costly to have a new contractor repeat the work and pay for separate data access.

The intended sole source contractor has unique experience working with these data in the special access platform and advanced knowledge of the modeling techniques that can be used with these data. Therefore, it would not be in the best interests of the Government to compete this action.