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Produced by Research Connections
Peer Reviewed JournalCurrent Filters: Resource Type:Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects [remove];
154 results found.|
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Access to Quality Child Care in Montana: Exploring Parent and Provider Perspectives An examination of the capacity of Montana's child care system to serve Native American families and rural families of children with disabilities. The study focuses on issues of access, supply, and demand, and seeks to determine whether the availability of child care services is substantially different for Native American children and children with disabilities than for other families. Methodology includes parent and provider surveys as well as on-site assessment of child care programs. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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America Cares for Children and Youth: School-Age Care Needs Assessment and Training Project A project documenting the demand and supply of formal and informal school-age care, particularly for ethnic minority or low-income youth, in inner city and remote rural areas of Georgia. The project also develops and evaluates community needs assessment tools and training protocols for informal caregivers. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Are Child Care Subsidies Cost-Effective? A study of the cost-effectiveness of child care subsidies along two dimensions: (1) a comparison of measures of cost-effectiveness to the alternative of an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); and (2) clarification of an optimal design strategy through the exploitation of the substantial cross-state policy innovation. The issue addressed is the extent to which these policies increase incentives for labor supply and human capital development, while reducing poverty and receipt of cash assistance. The study employs an empirical approach involving three broad steps: (1) modeling labor supply as a function of key budget constraint variables, including child care costs and the EITC, using a sample of single women; (2) modeling a number of indicators of educational attainment, in-school status, and job training enrollment as a function of child care costs and the EITC; and (3) conducting a welfare analysis on various components of states' CCDF comparisons in order to clarify an optimal design strategy. Data is drawn from multiple sources, primarily the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Assessing the Effectiveness of State and Local Quality Initiatives An exploration of initiatives designed to improve the quality and supply of child care. Questions include: (1) What initiatives have states and communities funded to improve child care quality and expand child care supply?; (2) How do states and communities assess the effectiveness of these initiatives?; and (3) What assessment tools/methods would be useful to states and communities? Products include a tool-kit of assessment measures and an analysis of selected programs. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Assessing States' Child Care Quality Rating Systems (QRS) Statewide or local child care Quality Rating Systems (QRS) are in place in 26 states and are under consideration in many others as tools to measure, monitor, and promote quality in early child care and education programs. The QRS Assessment produced a series of products as a resource to inform decision-making about and evaluation of QRS. Key products include: (1) a compendium of QRS, (2) two in-depth study reports (one focused on quality measurement and one on the role of QRIS in integration of the early care and education system); (3) a secondary data analysis on quality measurement, and (4) a toolkit for evaluating QRIS. Research questions include: (1) What is the variation in how select QRIS define and measure quality?; (2) What processes are used to measure components and determine an overall rating?; (2) What is the availability (and use) of consistent and reliable data on quality measurement?; (4) What role does QRIS have and to what extent does it contribute to integration of early care and education programs?; (5) How could states and localities monitor and assess the extent to which QRIS contribute to ECE system development?; (6) What is the prevalence of quality rating components across QRIS and at different levels?; (7) How does the prevalence of quality rating components differ between rating levels across QRIS and between types of providers (such as Head Start and accredited centers)?; (8) What is the unique effect of each quality component on observed quality?; and (9) What patterns of quality profiles emerge based on unique effects of components and how do these profiles map to actual rating levels in QRIS? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Asymmetric Information and the Child Care Market An assessment of whether publicly available information about quality influences parents' child care choices, with an investigation of what types of providers are likely to participate in evaluations to assess child care quality, and how the results of these evaluations can influence the market. The study expands the work of the Child Care Programs of Excellence (CCPOE) project, which was designed to: (1) recruit providers and assess their quality via on-site observations; (2) develop a quality rating report and disseminate it to parents; and (3) evaluate the impact of this information on parents' and providers' choices. Quantitative data analyses are used to answer the research questions. The policy implication for this work is the feasibility and benefit of educating parents about the importance of high quality child care. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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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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Balancing Work and Family During Children's First Three Years A secondary analysis of data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care, consisting of two phases. Phase one explores the relationship between mothers' number of work hours and responsiveness to their children, and how this relationship is moderated by child care quality. Phase two examines how employed mothers balance work and family roles, and how the two are moderated by child care quality. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Barriers to Child Care Subsidies A project consisting of three related studies. The first utilizes focus groups and a standardized survey with subsidy eligible families to examine subsidy use among low-income families. The second surveys low-income families to explore how child care preferences may be related to race and culture. The third uses observational measures to examine the quality of kith and kin care for families who do not use subsidies. This research provides policy-relevant information about developing subsidy policies that are sensitive to the contextual and cultural differences among low-income families. |
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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Caring for the Caregivers: Estimating the Causal Impact of Allowing Home-based Child Care Workers to Form Labor Unions on the Cost, Type, and Availability of Subsidized Child Care in Illinois This study investigates the impact of granting Illinois home-based child care providers the right to form a labor union on the per-child cost of subsidized child care for infants and toddlers, the type of child care (home-based vs. center-based) used by subsidy-receiving Illinois infants and toddlers, and the percentage of Illinois infants and toddlers who use child care subsidies. These analyses are conducted using a comparative case study method with social, economic, demographic, and housing data from the American Community Survey and records of the Child Care and Development Fund on United States infants and toddlers whose families received child care subsidies during the period from 2002-2008. Results are expected to reveal whether the unionization of Illinois home-based child care providers increased, via the collective bargaining process, the per-child amount of vouchers paid to providers; and the level of influence, if any, this action affords the unions to influence bureaucratic and regulatory processes encouraging subsidy-receiving families to choose home-based, as opposed to center-based, care for their young children. |
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 Community Services: Characteristics of Service Use and Effects on Parenting The study aims to improve the field's understanding of the features of child care services that are most critical to support children's development and identify family-level processes that might be influenced by child care. Specific research questions are: (1) What characteristics of parents predict usage of supports and services offered through the child care center and the community?; (2) What types of services and supports do parents use?; (3) Do the services and supports provided or referred to parents from the child care or preschool setting positively affect the home environment and parenting practices? To address these questions three national data sets (Head Start Impact Study, National Evaluation of Early Head Start, and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development) are being analyzed. The results of the study can further inform the field of the parental characteristics related to service take-up and whether the services have a positive effect on the home, in addition to providing practitioners and policymakers with evidence to design early child care and education programs that improve the environments and relationships vital for children's academic and social development. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database provides a single source of detailed information on CCDF policies across time and across the fifty states, territories, outlying areas, and the District of Columbia. The database includes policies regarding family eligibility, application and redetermination, priorities and waiting lists, family payments, provider requirements, reimbursement rates, and select quality and administration information from the CCDF plans. The database captures programs funded in whole or in part by CCDF funds, policies that can be coded with acceptable consistency across states, and policies that have been implemented. It captures changes across time, key county-level variation, and different treatment for different subsets of families. Data will be made available to the public in the form of the annual Book of Tables, capturing a subset of policies for a specific point in time. The full database detail will also be made available to the public. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care and Early Education Policy and Research Analysis and Technical Expertise Project The purpose of the competitive task order (TO) awarded to Child Trends is to support the provision of expert consultation, assessment and analysis in child care and early education policy and research to the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), including activities related to: providing expert advice, assistance and consultation in support of the agency's research priorities and goals; conducting studies to inform policy and practice and the development of new research priorities; identifying and refining measures and instruments to improve the collection of data related to program policies and practices, and to program outcomes for families and children, identifying sources of data and conducting statistical analyses on national and other original data-sets to answer questions of relevance to the Agency on child care utilization, child care supply, and the effects of child care and other early childhood policies on parental and child outcome; and, providing technical assistance and expertise in the preparation of written materials and convening of expert early childhood stakeholders. This task order also covers planning and facilitation of meetings of experts on child care research issues of relevance to the administration for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and other early childhood programs in States, Territories, and Tribes. |
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 and Special Needs Children: Challenges for Low-income Families A study of child care for children with special needs that also examines related issues of welfare reform and coordination with early intervention services at the community level. The research is based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with low income parents of children with special needs in six communities in Maine and Connecticut, as well as interviews with welfare caseworkers, early intervention case managers, child care providers, and low-wage employees, to provide a context for parents' perspectives. Surveys of 189 child care providers and 441 parents of children with special needs in Maine was conducted as well as a secondary analysis of data from a sample of families with children with special needs drawn from the National Survey of America's Families. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Arrangements Among Low-Income Families: A Qualitative Approach An analysis of child care arrangements among urban low-income families, using qualitative research methods--including interviews with mothers over a twelve month period, and observations in child care settings--to explore the following questions: (1) What are the strategies working families in low income urban communities adopt for their young children's care and development?; (2) How do different strategies affect the way children spend their time during early childhood?; and (3) What comparisons, if any, can be made in the care offered families with young children in American inner-city communities that differ by racial and ethnic composition, and/or the types of services available in those neighborhoods? The goal is to better understand individual family decisions within the context of the choices available at the community level. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Choices of Low-Income Families with Vulnerabilities This project explores the ways in which low-income, vulnerable families choose child care. The goal is to identify the family characteristics and contextual factors that expand or limit child care choices. The three-year project takes place in several low-income, urban communities participating in the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections initiative. The sites are Oakland, Providence, Seattle, and Denver. The focus is on vulnerable families, including families who have children with special needs, parents who are English language learners or immigrants, parents receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and children at risk of maltreatment. The research includes a family study and a community study. The family study includes two rounds of field-based, semi-structured interviews with parents regarding their decision-making processes related to child care. The community study, which takes place between the two rounds of family interviews, includes interviews with key community members regarding the community and policy contexts that affect child care choices. The following research questions are addressed: (1) What factors influence choice of care among low-income working families in a diverse set of urban neighborhoods? How do different families with particular vulnerabilities make child care choices?; (2) How do child care choice processes of parents overall, and particularly families who have special vulnerabilities, interact with several key contextual factors (e.g., job options, local policies and programs)?; and (3) What family characteristics or contextual factors seem to particularly expand or constrain the child care choices of low-income families overall, and the lives of vulnerable families in particular? Which of these seem amenable to policy strategies to support choices for low-income working families, and what should these strategies be? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Decision-making, Subsidy Use, and the Development of Economic Self-sufficiency among Immigrant Parents of Young Children Children of immigrants are the fastest growing segment of children in the U.S. with one quarter of children under age 18 having at least one foreign born parent (Hernandez, 2009). In addition, nearly 60%; of children of immigrants were enrolled in some form of ECCE in the year before Kindergarten (Magnuson, Lahaie, & Waldfogel, 2006). Still, we have limited understanding of immigrant families' experiences with the U.S. ECCE system. Consequently, the primary goal of this study was to provide insight into the experiences of low-income immigrant families as they navigated the early childhood care and education (ECCE) system. Specifically, African and Latino immigrants' child care decision-making experiences, their knowledge and use of child care subsidies, as well as families' strategies to achieve economic self-sufficiency were examined. The research questions were: (1) how do low-income immigrant mothers of preschool age children learn to navigate the U.S. ECCE system? Specifically, how do immigrant mothers select ECCE for their children and what factors shape this decision-making process; and (2) how do low-income immigrant families utilize ECCE, child care subsidies and other governmental supports to promote their economic self-sufficiency and support their parenting? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care during the First Year of School: How Extent, Type, and Quality Relate to Child Well-Being A systematic examination of the links between extent, type, and quality of child care and children's social-emotional and cognitive well-being, using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K). The sample for this study includes approximately 14,000 kindergarteners in the ECLS-K. The research explores the full range of child care options (formal and informal), focusing on sub-groups of children including low-income and subsidy-eligible. This study informs Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) policy regarding school-age child care, including how to design subsidy programs and cost effective quality enhancement strategies that best support school-age child well-being. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Effects in Context: Quality, Stability, and Multiplicity in Nonmaternal Child Care Arrangements from 3 to 6 Years of Age An assessment of the frequency with which low-income preschoolers (ages 3-6) experience unstable and multiple concurrent child care arrangements, and an examination of the effects of quality, stability, and multiplicity on children's social-emotional adjustment and school readiness. The study uses data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, and aims to help policymakers understand how child care experiences affect the social-emotional adjustment and school readiness of children living in poverty. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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The Child Care Estimator A task order awarded to the University of Maryland to provide user guides and materials to assist policymakers and their staff in navigating the Child Care Estimator statistical model. The Child Care Estimator model produces an estimated cost of meeting the total potential need for child care assistance, and a determination of the penetration rates at which the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) meet the total potential service population's identified needs. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Price Dynamics in California A California child care market study with the following objectives: (1) tracing trends in price; (2) relating price changes to characteristics of supply and demand in county and sub-county markets; (3) understanding how providers set prices; and (4) assessing the effect of vouchers, reimbursement rate ceilings, or other policies on the overall price of care in the private market. Sub-study 1 is a trend analysis of provider prices from Regional Market Rate Surveys over the past decade. Sub-study 2 is a longitudinal study of 25 providers in urban San Mateo County and rural Kern County. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care Quality and Consumer Education An assessment and rating of the quality of child care providers in four counties, using structural and process measures, and evaluating the impact of ratings on parent choice and the child care market structure, including supply, prices, and turnover. Ratings are made available to parents, in partnership with resource and referral agencies, and parents are surveyed to explore the types of information used to make child care decisions. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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