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Produced by Research Connections
Peer Reviewed JournalCurrent Filters: Resource Type:Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects [remove]; Full Text:no [remove]; Classification:Research & Evaluation Methods [remove];
11 results found.|
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Connecticut Early Childhood Research and Development Project: Child Care Data CONNections A project undertaken by the Connecticut Department of Social Services, and the Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut, to build a statewide research infrastructure for well-informed, effective and efficient program and policy development at state and local levels, with the advice and guidance of six stakeholder panels (research, data, advocacy, technology, funders, and data users). Activities include building an inventory of databases, prioritizing recommendations for aligning existing databases and related information dissemination processes, and developing a three- to five-year research agenda. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Improving the Quality of Child Care Available and Used by Low-Income Working Parents and At-Risk Families through the Development of an Integrated Data Systems Model for Policy Research and Decision-Making The goal of this project is to develop an interagency, integrated data system for the purpose of assessing accessibility and quality of early care and education programs available to and utilized by low-income working parents and at-risk families, as well as the impact of quality initiatives to support the school readiness of children in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Steps to creating the unit include: identifying current data collected at the state and local levels; assessing data quality and gaps; establishing appropriate data sharing and protection agreements; and designing and incrementally building and deploying the system. The data system produced will be a web-accessible, data management system designed to provide reliable data usable by appropriate state, local, nonprofit, academic and other stakeholders, to increase support for policy-level decision-making in Virginia. The following questions are addressed: (1) What types of and what is the quality of child care being used by families in the subsidy program?; (2) Does this vary by locality and family characteristics, such as ethnicity?; and (3) How are these children faring in Kindergarten? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Maine Child Care Research Project This project consists of two components, one focused on program quality comparing programs enrolled in Maine's Quality Rating System (QRS) to those not enrolled. The other component is focused on use of child level assessment information to improve program quality. The purpose of the first component is to increase knowledge about improvements to program quality over time considering influences due to enrollment in the Maine Quality Rating System (QRS). Programs enrolled in the QRS receive additional supports than those programs not enrolled in the QRS. This study component also includes a focus on a set of programs enrolled in the QRS and contracted by the state DHHS to provide child care services to low-income working parents. Baseline data was collected in 2009 and follow-up data is being collected in 2011. The aim of the second study component is to explore the kinds of approaches to assessments that are used with infants and toddlers in higher quality programs. Authentic child level assessment is a standard in the QRS and this case study research will increase knowledge about how this standard is being met and or what barriers exist to meeting this standard. The research questions are: (1) What are the differences in program quality between child care programs enrolled in the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Quality Rating System (QRS) and child care programs not enrolled in the Maine DHHS Quality Rating System?; (2) What is the impact of federal Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) quality funding and subsequent supports on improving the quality of care available to and utilized by low-income working parents through contracted child care sites?; and (3) How are individual programs that serve infants and toddlers meeting the authentic assessment standard of the Quality for ME system? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Maryland Cooperative Agreement to Merge Data Files to Research the Effect of Subsidy Programs on School Readiness A recent shift of the child care subsidy program to the Maryland State Department of Education in 2006 has allowed for increased collaboration among the child care licensing, subsidy, and credentialing offices and the State education system. The goal of this project is to examine associations between child care subsidy receipt and kindergarteners' school readiness. The three main components of this project include: (1) enhancing and analyzing administrative data; (2) contextualizing findings from administrative data through findings from focus groups; and (3) building a research consortium with the goal of refining early childhood education policy. Research questions include: (1) How do children who received a child care subsidy the year prior to kindergarten perform on assessments of school readiness upon kindergarten entry? How do these children compare with children from low-income families who did not receive a subsidy?; (2) How do parents and community-based child care providers define high quality care and school readiness? What challenges and supports do providers experience when preparing children for kindergarten?; and (3) What is the quality of providers who accept child care subsidies, and those who actually serve subsidized children throughout the state? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Massachusetts Research, Analysis, and Evaluation Project A project to establish a state-of-the-art early care and education data warehouse and build a Research Analysis and Evaluation Unit within the Office of Child Care Services (OCCS). The warehouse integrates data sets from many sources, including state administrative databases, census data, and state initiated research efforts. Along with the development of in-house expertise in research and analysis, the warehouse supports the evaluation of state quality program initiatives, such as tiered rate increases, and assessments of the longitudinal impact of program quality on school readiness. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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New England Workforce Partners for Early Care and Education (NEW Partners) A partnership focusing on child care workforce issues, developing an infrastructure for routine data collection and analysis in each State, describing the child care workforce in New England, and helping to translate data and findings into policy development, refinement and implementation. Questions addressed include: (1) What does the workforce look like?; (2) How do key variables interact?; (3) What types of professional supports are available and used by caregivers?; (4) What effects do policy innovations have on workforce quality and stability?; and (5) What are the State-by-State variations? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Oregon Child Care Research and State Capacity Project A collaborative project for the creation of the Oregon Data Analysis Unit, operating within the Child Care Division. Functions of the unit include: (1) developing a comprehensive, systemic performance measurement process for the Oregon child care system; (2) redesigning the child care licensing system; and (3) producing guidebooks of basic methodologies to support ongoing research and data efforts in Oregon and across the nation. The unit is also involved in two major research efforts. The first continues the Five-State Study of Child Care Subsidy Durations, addressing questions about the relationship among use of child care subsidies, employment, and stability of child care. The second uses data on child care supply and usage to capture the dynamics of the child care supply. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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The Psychometric Quality of The Preschool Child Observation Record: Does It Pass the Test For Use in Child Care Programs? The study aims to provide high quality evidence on the second most used assessment tool in Head Start--the Preschool Child Observation Record, 2nd edition (COR-2). To that end, this study has five objectives: (1) determine the dimensionality of the COR-2; (2) determine whether or not the optimal factor structure is the same for boys, girls, Whites, African Americans, Latinos, English language learners, and across time; (3) assess the extent to which the COR-2 is related to other validated measures of development captured at the same time and in the future; and (4) test the assumption that the five skill points of each COR-2 item are in fact in order of skill complexity. The study analyzes a subset of data from the Evidence-Based Program for the Integration of Curricula (EPIC) project, a comprehensive early childhood program specifically designed for preschool children from an underserved, minority urban population. This study uses the COR-2 data collected from a large representative sample of preschool children from low income households to examine the validity and quality of the COR-2 to inform child care services using rigorous psychometric methods. The project will interpret the research findings collaboratively with policymakers, child care professionals, and parents to stimulate a discussion about purposeful assessment in early childhood and to determine ways to improve assessment for preschool children from low income households. |
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Research Connections The purpose of Child Care and Early Education Research Connections is to promote high quality research and to help inform policy. One of the primary ways we accomplish that goal is through an interactive and easily searchable website of over 18,000 resources on early care and education, including original scholarly research, government reports, fact sheets and briefs, datasets and instruments. Additionally, Research Connections produces its own publications that synthesize research on key topics, and organizes various webinars on new research geared towards policymakers and others in the early education field. The project is operated through a partnership between the National Center for Children in Poverty, at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, at the University of Michigan. Objectives include: (1) ensure the long-term sustainability of Research Connections through new technology and standards-based architecture; (2) ensure a constantly evolving, complete and up-to-date collection, responsive to the needs of the early care and education community; (3) maintain and grow the archive of datasets, as well as the community of analysts who use them, (4)maximize usefulness of the site and respond to the community's varied needs for information, and (5) expand collaborative activities to bring in new stakeholders and partners at the local, regional and national level. |
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The Size of the US Child Care Workforce: Applying and Validating Demand-Based Estimation Methods for the States A test of a new econometric model for estimating characteristics of the child care workforce in 6-10 selected states, building on work by the University of Washington's Human Services Policy Center in collaboration with the Center for the Child Care Workforce. The project aims to validate the efficacy of the new model so that it can be used to produce workforce estimates for each of the 50 States, and, potentially, for sub-State regions. More uniformity and validity of State data also allows for aggregation across States to provide a better national picture of the U.S. child care workforce. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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South Carolina Child Care State Research Capacity Building Project The main purposes of the project are multifold, but include the following: (1) leveraging data resources by enhancing South Carolina's Data Warehouse with additional administrative childcare focused files; and (2) building research capacity to better track South Carolina's children and their families who use childcare subsidies and other services. Specific project objectives are to: (1) create new and/or improved administrative data with the capacity to integrate or link with the SC Integrated Human Services Data Warehouse; (2) Develop web-based tools to access linked data sets from multiple service providers capturing key data on families, children and child care service providers; and (3) Investigate the impact of the CCDF on improving the quality of child care available to and utilized by low-income working parents and families who are at risk. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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