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Produced by Research Connections
Peer Reviewed JournalCurrent Filters: Pub Year:2009 [remove];
44 results found.|
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Associations between provider training and education and other quality indicators in low-income children's primary care arrangements at 24 months of age A comparison of quality indicators in home- and center-based child care settings serving two-year-old low income children, and of the relationship of quality indicators in those settings to provider training and education, based on an analysis of data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort |
Reports & Papers
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Associations between provider training and education and other quality indicators in low-income children's primary care arrangements at 24 months of age [Executive summary] A summary of a comparison of quality indicators in home- and center-based child care settings serving two-year-old low income children, and of the relationship of quality indicators in those settings to provider training and education, based on an analysis of data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort |
Executive Summary
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Awareness, Accessibility, & Adequacy: Child Care Management among Low-Income, Urban Black Custodial Grandmothers An analysis of how low-income, urban black custodial grandmothers manage child care, using ethnographic research methods--including in-depth interviews with custodial grandmothers and child care agents over a twelve-month period and participant observation sessions in child care settings--to explore the following questions: (1) What do low-income, urban black custodial grandmothers do for child care when they are thrust into the role of parenting their grandchildren?; (2) What are the strategies they adopt for their grandchildren's care and development while they are serving as their primary and sole caretakers?; (3) How do different strategies affect the way children spend their time?; and (4) What comparisons can be made in the care offered children being cared for by their grandmothers that differ by the type of care arrangement grandmothers have with their grandchildren (e.g. private kinship care, legal guardianship, or kinship foster care) and/or the types of child care services and resources available in their neighborhoods? The goal of this project is to better understand individual family decisions within the context of their family forms and dynamics and the choices available at the state and community level. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Capturing the Heterogeneity in Quality within Early Care and Education Programs Serving Preschool-Age Children The goal of this study is to improve our understanding of the variation in quality within and across classrooms. To achieve this goals we use two sources of rich data on program quality and child outcomes from centers serving preschool-age children. The study has three aims: (1) determine how to combine measures of the characteristics of individual staff members in a classroom to best capture quality at the classroom level; (2) determine whether quality should be measured at the level of the staff member, classroom or center; and (3) determine whether there are ways to improve the efficiency of measuring quality at the center, classroom, and staff-member levels. The research questions include: (1) How should staff quality attributes be combined to create classroom level scores that reflect actual quality?; (2) What is the optimal unit of analysis in studying ECE quality?; and (3) Are there ways to increase efficiencies in assessing ECE center quality? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners The primary goal of the Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners is to advance the research field to improve assessment, child care, and education for dual language learners (DLLs) from birth through five years of age. This new center pursues a focused agenda of research and national leadership activities that: (1) improve the state of knowledge and measurement in early childhood research on young DLLs and the needs of their families as these relate to children's development; and (2) identify and advance the evidence base for the best practices and strategies in early care and education programming to support the overall development of young DLLs and to effectively support their families. Settings to be considered include early care and education center-based programs, home-based and family child care providers, and Head Start and Early Head Start programs. The Center is jointly funded by the Child Care Bureau (CCB) and the Office of Head Start (OHS). As such, the research team is expected to be responsive to calls from OHS and CCB for research-based guidance and syntheses of research regarding DLLs to address questions of pressing concern to policy and practice. Programmatic concerns to be addressed by research center: ACF is concerned with promoting all children's early development in child care settings and early education programs. The substantial and growing population of DLLs, with its unique and varied issues, introduces new challenges and opportunities to early childhood programs across the country as policymakers and practitioners find they must adjust and adapt their efforts in order to serve this population. The program announcement highlighted several specific programmatic concerns that the Center should address in its work. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care and Early Education Quality Features, Thresholds and Dosage and Child Outcomes: Study Design (Q-DOT) This two-and-a-half year design project will examine associations between the quality of early care and education settings and child outcomes, asking whether certain thresholds of quality or dosage need to be met or particular aspects of quality need to be present before links are apparent. The project is intended to provide guidance to ACF, other federal agencies and other stakeholders to guide new research on the quality of early care and education; support quality improvement initiatives and practice; and inform policy decision-making at the state and national levels. The project will focus on center-based settings serving children from birth through age 5, focusing on children from low-income families. The research questions are: (1) What specific features of quality in center-based early care and education for children from birth to age five lead to gains in child outcomes?; (2) Are there thresholds of quality above and below which the strength of the associations between quality and child outcomes differ? For example is there a level of quality above which improvements are associated with accelerated gains in child outcomes?; (3) Is there a minimum threshold of quality necessary to affect child outcomes?; (4) Do greater dosages of quality care lead to greater gains in child outcomes?; (5) How do quality features, thresholds and dosage relate independently to child outcomes? In relation to one another?; (6) How well are existing measures of quality care capturing these thresholds and dosages? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child care quality study: The impact of Head Start partnership on child care quality: Final report An examination of the influence of Head Start and child care provider partnerships on children’s outcomes and the quality of services provided, based on assessments of more that 600 children and surveys and observations of more than 200 child care centers and family child care providers in Ohio |
Reports & Papers
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Child care quality study: The impact of Head Start partnership on child care quality: Final report [Executive summary] A summary of an examination of the influence of Head Start and child care provider partnerships on children’s outcomes and the quality of services provided, based on assessments of more that 600 children and surveys and observations of more than 200 child care centers and family child care providers in Ohio |
Executive Summary
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Child care subsidies and the employment of single mothers An examination of the relationship between child care subsidies and the employment of single mothers after 1996, based on data collected in 1999 and 2002 from the National Survey of America's Families, and an examination of the relationship between free public kindergarten for 5-year-old children and employment for different groups of mothers and groups of states, based on data from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 rounds of the American Community Survey |
Reports & Papers
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Child Care Subsidies: Who Uses Them and What Do They Buy Low-Income Families and Children? This study uses data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) to: (1) determine whether eligible recipients of child care subsidies differ from the eligible non-recipients of child care subsidies on child and family characteristics and parental preferences for child care; (2) examine whether subsidy receipt in preschool leads parents to purchase higher-quality child care than they could have afforded without the subsidy; and (3) test whether subsidy receipt in preschool is associated with better school readiness in kindergarten. Expanding on prior work, this study identifies eligible non-recipients of child care subsidies who resemble subsidy recipients not only on observable demographic characteristics but also on variables that are harder to measure, like parental preferences for specific features of child care. Subsidy recipients are compared to eligible non-recipients on family and child characteristics and parental preference variables. Then, a propensity score matching technique is used to estimate the causal effect of subsidy use in preschool on the quality of preschool care children experience. Finally, state-fixed effects regressions with a lagged dependent variable are employed to test whether subsidy use in preschool is associated with children’s school readiness in kindergarten. If such an association exists, the possibility that preschool child care quality mediates this link is explored. In all analyses, children who receive subsidies are compared to children who are eligible for subsidies but who instead use either Head Start, or public pre-kindergarten, or unsubsidized care. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Subsidy Use and the Relationship to Parental Work and Child Care Quality in Rural Communities The purpose of this project is to understand how low-income rural families use child care subsidies, the quality of care they receive, and how subsidy use is related to child outcomes and parental work conditions. The project addresses these topics with data from the Family Life Project. The research questions include: (1) What percentage of rural families who are income-eligible for subsidies and use child care take up subsidies, and do the arrangements they make differ from (a) economically disadvantaged families who do not use subsidies; (b) economically advantaged families using child care?; (2) How do the work conditions of families who take-up child care subsidies differ from those who do not? Specifically, is job quality higher and more stable (e.g. more flexible, fewer turnovers, provide benefits, higher wages, more stable work hours)?; and (3) Is context, as measured by neighborhood disadvantage and geographic isolation, related to subsidy take-up? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Children at risk in the child welfare system: Collaborations to promote school readiness A study of collaboration among the child welfare, early intervention and preschool special education, and early care and education systems to promote the school readiness of children in the child welfare system, based on an analysis of data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Wellbeing (NSCAW) and a case study in Colorado that included key stakeholder interviews and foster parent and caseworker surveys |
Reports & Papers
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A Closer Look: Child Care, PreK, and Head Start Collaboration CCDF, Pre-K and Head Start all serve low-income children under the age of 5, but each of these programs is guided by different goals, standards, delivery models, and operational hours, resulting in unique strengths as well as differences in quality. Research has shown that child care providers in collaboration with Head Start demonstrate benefits over comparison providers in terms of program quality, teacher quality, and classroom quality. However, questions remain about the nature and impact of multi-program collaborations on desired outcomes. Our study is designed to address questions about the nature and impact of child care, pre-K, and Head Start collaboration. We are analyzing state, provider-and child-level data provided by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services (ODJFS), and existing survey datasets from Education Development Center, Inc (EDC) to address the following research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of programs that are engaged in collaboration?; (2) What are the characteristics of teachers who work in programs engaged in collaboration?; (3) What are the characteristics of the children who are enrolled in programs engaged in collaboration?; (4) Is there a relationship between collaboration and classroom quality?; (5) Is there a relationship between collaboration and teacher professional development?; (6) Is there a relationship between collaboration and child growth? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Cortisol patterns at home and child care: Afternoon differences and evening recovery in children attending very high quality full-day center-based child care A study of the relationship between measurements of classroom quality and changes in children's cortisol levels at three child care centers in upstate New York which score very highly on a measurement of quality |
Reports & Papers
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Design phase: National Study of Child Care Supply and Demand--2010: Literature review and summary A review of studies on child care supply and demand for children ages birth through 13 conducted at the local, state, and national levels, and a discussion of the changing labor market and demographics of child care |
Literature Review
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Design phase of the National Study of Child Care Supply and Demand (NSCCSD): Feasibility test report A description of the method used to evaluate the feasibility of the National Study of Child Care Supply and Demand, including an assessment of the study to answer its research questions while remaining within budget constraints |
Methods
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Early care and education blended funding: Annotated bibliography of related sources A collection of summaries of publications on the alignment, coordination, and integration of funding streams for early care and education services |
Bibliographies
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Early care and education quality and child outcomes An overview of research on the relationship of child care and early education quality to children's cognitive, social, and academic development |
Fact Sheets & Briefs
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Evaluating, developing, and enhancing domain-specific measures of child care quality A discussion of measuring child care quality by identifying child care and early education practices and features associated with child development in specific domains, including language and literacy, math, science, and cognition, socioemotional competence, and health, safety, and nutrition |
Fact Sheets & Briefs
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Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies: Findings from an experimental test of three language/literacy interventions in child care centers in Miami-Dade County: Final report Findings from a two-year experimental study of the impacts of three different language and literacy interventions on teacher behavior, classroom environment, and children's language development and early literacy skills in classrooms of 4-year-olds at child care centers serving children from low-income families in Miami-Dade County, Florida |
Reports & Papers
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Examining Early Care Experiences of Language Minority Children with the ECLS-B A project using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) to examine the characteristics of language minority families and describe their choice of care for children at 9 months, 2 years, and during preschool. Specifically, the study focuses on four research questions: (1) To what extent are race/ethnicity, parental citizenship, and family language minority status related?; (2) Do children from language minority homes experience different types of child care at 9 months, 2 years, and 4 years of age?; (3) Is any disparity in participation in center-based care accounted for by differences in family characteristics at each time point?; and (4) During the year before school, how do the characteristics of center-based care experienced by language minority children compare with characteristics of the center-based care experienced by non-language minority children? The results of the study are expected to contribute to the literature on child care choices made by diverse families and the characteristics and quality of care received. In addition, it is expected that results will provide valuable information to inform Child Care and Development Fund policy and Child Care Resource and Referral agency practices. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Exploring Child Care Cultural Congruency: Predictors and Pathways to Social and Emotional Outcomes in Kindergarten This project examines cultural congruency (an aspect of culturally responsive care) between home and school in Head Start Child & Family Experiences Survey Data from 1997-2000 (FACES). Cultural congruency involves the level of continuity or discontinuity between home and school environments. There is little research that directly examines how culture or issues associated with cultural diversity and cultural responsiveness impact children's concurrent experiences in child care and beyond. In this study, we define culture broadly to avoid limiting it to race/ethnicity and language. Cultural congruency, therefore, is defined as "ways of doing," or the routines, beliefs/values, & practices experienced in both the home and school contexts. The goals of the project are to identify how cultural congruency can be operationally defined, and to determine how it may impact childhood outcomes in preschool and Kindergarten. The research objectives are to: (1) determine what aspects of the home and child care Head Start FACES data from the 1997 cohort correspond with the theoretical construct of cultural congruence; (2) determine how robust the cultural congruency construct found through research objective 1 for each cohort is within the Head Start FACES population; (3) delineate the distinct types of cultural congruency for each cohort within the Head State FACES population; (4) if there are distinct types of cultural congruency, determine whether distinct types of cultural congruency in preschool predict social and emotional school readiness in Kindergarten and first grade; and (5) identify various pathways of cultural congruence over time that predict children's social and emotional outcomes |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Exploring Parent Decision-Making: Subsidies, Employment, and Child Care Decisions that parents make with regard to nonparental child care for their children are tied to other household decisions. Intuitively, we would expect the choice of maternal employment and the setting of care for young children during the mother's employment hours to be a simultaneous decision. While we refer to these decisions as "choices", it is important to recognize that these occur with the context of (often severe) resource constraints and limited information, and are influenced by social and group norms and expectations. Not all of these constraints and influences are observable by researchers, making the detangling of these choices challenging in quantitative analysis. This project uses recent, nationally-representative, longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) and innovative statistical methods to examine parents' child care and employment decisions in the context of subsidy receipt. Research questions include: (1) What factors affect parents' decisions about employment, use of non-parental child care and type of child care used?; and (2) what is the role of child care subsidies in these decisions? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Fluctuation in Child Care Cost Burden: The Effect of Increasing Subsidy Policy Generosity on Parent Decision Making This study uses secondary analysis of administrative data to examine the amount of variability in the parent share of child care cost experienced by participants in the subsidy program and the effect of cost burden variation on decisions related to continuation in the program and type of care selected. Substantial changes in Oregon child care subsidy policy in October 2007 provided the impetus for this study. Oregon went from having the least to having nearly the most generous subsidy policies in the country and this change provided an opportunity to examine how subsidy policy impacts families. Research questions include: (1) How predictable is the child care cost burden of a parent using a child care subsidy, as indicated by changes in copay, hours authorized, hours billed, and payments made to providers?; (2) To what extent did the 2007 policy change affect the amount of financial assistance and the predictability of parent cost burden associated with the subsidy program?; and (3) To what extent are the October 2007 policy changes associated with changes in type of care and stability of subsidy use? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Guide to datasets for research and policymaking in child care and early education An annotated bibliography of existing large-scale datasets that provide useful information to policymakers, researchers, and others in the field of child care and early education in the United States |
Other
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