Supporting the Use of Administrative Data in Early Care and Education Research: Resource Series

This set of resources is intended to strengthen the ability of state/territory child care administrators and their research partners to utilize administrative data to address policy-relevant early care and education research questions. The resources are designed for researchers who are new to the analysis of administrative data as well as seasoned users of administrative data who are expanding their research to include new types of administrative data (e.g., expanding to a new state or new agency). Research staff in state agencies may also find these resources useful.

1. Developing Collaborative Partnerships with State Agencies to Strengthen Research Using Early Care and Education Administrative Data provides considerations for building a strong partnership between researchers who want to analyze administrative data and the state partners who oversee the administrative data.
2. Determining the Feasibility of Using State Early Care and Education Administrative Data is designed to help researchers and their state partners determine whether analyzing administrative data is feasible and appropriate for addressing their child care and early education research questions.
3. Considerations in Preparing to Analyze Administrative Data to Address Early Care and Education Related Research Questions can help researchers prepare for issues that may arise when using administrative data in a research project.
4. Early Childhood Data Definitions: A Guide for Researchers Using Administrative Data summarizes four existing early childhood resources that can help researchers define variables to support secondary analysis of administrative data sets.
5. Opportunities through State Agency Research Partnerships for Using Administrative Data to Support Early Care and Education highlights three research partnerships between state agencies and researchers, provides examples of research questions answered by the partnerships, and describes benefits and challenges of establishing a strong research partnership.
6. Guidelines for Developing Data Sharing Agreements to Use State Administrative Data for Early Care and Education Research describes components of a data sharing agreement, outlines steps in developing an agreement, and includes examples of data sharing agreements.
7. Administrative Data Sources to Address Early Care and Education Policy Relevant Questions highlights a range of federal, state, and local administrative data sources from early care and education, health, child welfare, public assistance, human services, and employment programs
8. Incorporating Spatial Analyses into Early Care and Education Research describes how spatial analysis can be used to examine early care and education patterns and trends.