Since its inception in 1965, Head Start has served over 19 million low-income children and families across the country. The Head Start program provides comprehensive child and family support services including education, health, social services, and parent involvement, which have served as a model for the field. As the program continues to evolve, it is constantly striving to provide the highest quality services possible.

With the reauthorization of the Head Start Act in 1994, Congress established Early Head Start to provide high-quality child and family development services to low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers. This comprehensive, two-generation program provides intensified services that can begin before the child is born, and concentrates on enhancing the child's development and supporting the family during the critical first three years of the child's life.

As a national laboratory, Head Start supports evaluation and research of the Head Start program, its various demonstrations, and related individual research activities. In order for Head Start to maintain its leadership position in the provision and demonstration of state-of-the-art services, Head Start initiates and supports new research activities; synthesizes, disseminates and incorporates into program operations important research findings; and actively engages the academic community in all research endeavors. With this renewed focus on quality, it becomes increasingly important that Head Start research is accessible to policy makers, researchers, Head Start program staff, and others. This bibliography is an attempt to help fill that need.

This publication marks the third time such a compilation has been produced under the auspices of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The first effort, which collected approximately 700 references, was conducted by the Social Research Group at George Washington University in 1977. This collection was augmented by a second effort, completed in 1985 by CSR, Inc., which included over 1,500 citations and annotations.

The current bibliography contains resources from 1965 to the present, collected under all three initiatives. Documents collected from 1965 to 1984 are identified by the term "Archived" in the document type code at the bottom of each citation. The archived bibliography citations and abstracts have been integrated into the Annotated Bibliography of Head Start Research as they were originally written and contain some studies about preschool programs outside of Head Start.

Inclusion Criteria

In selecting documents for the bibliography, priority for inclusion was given to documents that:

1. Present qualitative or quantitative research data about Head Start, Early Head Start, or any of its experimental programs;
2. Reanalyze Head Start/Early Head Start data;
3. Review and synthesize Head Start/Early Head Start findings;
4. Criticize or defend Head Start/Early Head Start studies; or
5. Describe specific Head Start/Early Head Start programs and processes.

Occasionally, "editorial" documents were included, when fundamental issues of interest to researchers were addressed. A liberal interpretation of the criteria was used so potentially useful documents would not be excluded.

In addition to Head Start/Early Head Start research, this effort collected research reports from preschool programs providing comprehensive services similar to those provided by Head Start. Among works not included were preschool advocacy articles, newspaper- type summaries of studies, training manuals, and curriculum guides.