2020-2025
The purpose of this project is to understand how parents find and use information to make informed choices regarding their children’s enrollment in early care and education programs, with a particular focus on parents’ use of information from states’ and territories’ consumer education efforts. This project also aims to examine the breadth of states’ and territories’ consumer education efforts and dissemination strategies employed by states and territories to identify innovative efforts, as well as to understand the ways in which states’ and territories’ consumer education strategies inform parents’ early care and education selections.
Tasks currently in progress include:
- Developing a literature review and conceptual framework;
- Identifying and analyzing existing data to address key questions about parents’ search and selection of early care and education and use of states’ and territories’ consumer education information;
- Planning a survey of parents across multiple states and territories to address key questions about how parents search for early care and education and use consumer education information to make decisions about early care and education;
- Planning case studies to learn more about the consumer education strategies that states and territories are using;
- Developing, testing, and refining tools that states and territories are authorized to use in the CCDBG law and rules to support states’ and territories’ efforts to measure the effectiveness of their consumer education efforts in supporting parents’ search and selection of early care and education.
Project staff and OPRE will partner with substantive and technical experts and engage with the community (e.g., parents/families) as well as those from government agencies (e.g., state/territory lead agencies) to inform the work of this project.
OPRE contracted with NORC at the University of Chicago and its subcontractor, Urban Institute to conduct this study.
The points of contact are Alysia Blandon, Bonnie Mackintosh and Shannon Warren.