Talking Points

The Early Head Start child care studies drew upon data from several sources.

First, the 17 Early Head Start research programs were visited in three rounds of site visits to learn about their implementation of Early Head Start services, including child care.

Second, as part of overall data collection about services, extensive data about use of child care were collected from parents in the research sample.

Third, you have heard that the children and families were assessed when children were 14, 24, and 36 months of age. As part of this child and family assessment, families who used 10 hours of child care or more were asked if the study could contact their primary child care provider. These providers were then observed using well-known child care quality observation scales.

The quality of care received by children in both program and control groups was observed. Quality was observed in all types of settings; however, the researchers were more successful in completing observations in center-based care than in family child care settings.

Most of what we report today is from descriptive data of Early Head Start children and families, but in some cases we report about impacts of the study by using data from the program and control groups. Because the main study was an experimental design study, it is possible to study differences between the program and control groups, and when differences are found, it is possible to attribute them to Early Head Start.

Additional Information:

Observations used included the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS; Harms, Cryer, and Clifford, 1990), the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (ECERS-R; Harms, Clifford, and Cryer, 1998), and the Family Day Care Rating Scale (FDCRS; Harms and Clifford, 1989) in family child care. In all settings, the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale (Arnett, 1989) was used as an additional measure, and a new measure that examined the language environments of children in child care was used. This measure is called the Child-Caregiver Observation Scale (C-COS; Boller, Sprachman, and the Early Head Start Research Consortium, 1998). It was developed by drawing upon the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment (ORCE; NICHD Early Childhood Research Network, 1997) and the Adult Involvement Scale (Howes and Smith, 1995). Children were observed in child care settings for a minimum of two hours per observation. All observers were required to meet strict reliability standards to ensure uniform data collection methods across the sites.

All scales except for the C-COS have been used in many child care studies. They do not correspond perfectly to the Performance Standards, but programs scoring highly on these measures would be expected to meet most of the Performance Standards for quality and vice versa.

The research design was not perfect because child care was dynamic in communities. For example, some control group children attended community child care centers that may have become Early Head Start partners. This was unavoidable.

The response rates for the observations varied by the age point at which they were conducted, the type of arrangement (center or family child care), and whether the child was in the program or the control group. At 24 months of age, for example, response rates were 78% and 63% for program and control groups, respectively, in center care and 39% and 28%, respectively, for program and control groups in eligible family child care arrangements. Family child care included both licensed and legally exempt care or informal care. These rates are comparable to those found in other studies of child care quality. The lower response rates for family child care limited answering some research questions across types of care.

The final implementation study report, Pathways to Quality (ACF, 2002b), provides greater detail about child care from the program point of view.

Discussion Questions:

• What do you know about assessment of child care quality in your area? Are you familiar with the measures used in this study? What other measures of child care quality are you familiar with? What dimensions of quality tell you the most about the experiences your children are receiving?
• Why do you think the researchers were more successful in assessing quality in centers than in family child care homes, which included informal care? Do you have similar experiences? What are implications for monitoring quality in settings used by Early Head Start children?