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Produced by Research Connections
Peer Reviewed JournalCurrent Filters: Project Type:SA [remove];
11 results found.|
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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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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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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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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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Parental Choice: Research Evidence from Two National Datasets This project uses secondary data analysis of data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Birth Cohort to analyze the relations among child, family, employment and program characteristics and parent choice. The research questions include: What are the most common eco-cultural profiles of parental preferences, attitudes towards maternal employment and beliefs about raising children; (2) Are parents in specific "ecological niches" more likely to hold these profiles?; (3) What is the relation between parental preference profiles and child care utilization patterns (type of care, hours of care and quality of care used)?; (4) How do opportunities and constraints shape child care utilization patterns, given parental preferences, attitudes and beliefs?; (5) Do the relations among parental preferences, opportunities and constraints, and child care utilization vary for specific subpopulations of: [a] low-income working families at risk of needing TANF benefits, [b] language, ethnic and racial minority families and children, and [c] families with infants and toddlers? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Secondary Analyses of Data on Child Care: Transition to Kindergarten An analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort to identify practices that early care and education (ECE) programs can implement to promote successful transition to kindergarten for children served by the Child Care and Development Fund. The study explores three primary research questions: (1) What transition practices are used in ECE programs?; (2) How do ECE and kindergarten transition practices and alignment of ECE and kindergarten teachers' expectations about school readiness affect transition and school readiness outcomes?; and (3) What transition practices and outcomes are experienced by specific subgroups? The results of the study are expected to contribute to an understanding of: (1) transition activities in ECE programs and kindergarten classes; (2) how transition activities combine with child, family, ECE program and school characteristics to produce transition and school readiness outcomes; and (3) how transition activities and outcomes differ for subgroups of children. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Subsidy Density, Child Care Quality, and Low-Income Child and Family Well-being in Tennessee: A Longitudinal Analysis Using Matched Administrative and Survey Data The purpose of this study is to integrate extant state child care quality and TANF longitudinal datasets to investigate policy relevant research on child care subsidy, child care quality, and child and family well-being. Specifically, this secondary analysis study provides the opportunity to examine the associations between global quality scores and subsidy utilization across four program types (school-age, infant/toddler, family child care, and preschool) over a four year period. Further, quality data has been matched with a subset of TANF participants to examine longitudinally the relationships between child care quality and family reported child and family well-being indicators. Research questions include: (1) What is the relationship between subsidy density and global program quality?; (2) How does the receipt of child care subsidies affect child and family well-being?; (3) How are child care arrangements influenced by TANF participation patterns?, and (4) What are the relationships between child and family well-being, child care subsidy and program quality? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Testing Thresholds of Quality Care on Child Outcomes Globally and in Subgroups: Secondary Analysis of QUINCE, Early Head Start and Midwest Child Care Research Consortium Quality Rating Systems Pilot Data The purpose of this project is to examine relations between quality measures and child outcomes within QUINCE and Early Head Start data, examining for both linear and nonlinear associations. When nonlinear relations are found, we do additional analyses to determine where cut points are located and whether quality above and below the cut point differentially relates to outcomes. The research questions include: (1) Are relations between quality and child outcomes linear or nonlinear?; (2) If nonlinear, what are critical cut points or thresholds?; (3) Can reliable factors within Rating Scale and CIS measures be identified?; and (4) Do the relations hold for selected subgroups? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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