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Parents' selections of child care arrangements involve complex decisions made in the context of child and family needs, resources and constraints. This study analyzed data from a survey of low-income parents to examine the factors associated with the type of care arrangement used most often. We employed Bayesian estimation methods to account for the interrelated nature of parental employment and child care decisions. We incorporated parental preferences for characteristics of child care to predict the type of care setting based on a factor analysis of parent responses about the importance of different care characteristics. We found that latent factors that were associated with a higher probability of working, or of working more hours, also increased the probability of using centers or family child care, and decreased the likelihood of using family, friend or neighbor (informal) care. In concordance with the existing literature, low-income families in Minnesota were more likely to use informal care for infants (relative to preschool-age children), and households with more educated parents were more likely to use centers. Hispanic families were less likely to use any form of non-parental care. Given the potential of high-quality child care to increase the well-being and developmental trajectories of low-income children, understanding parents' decisions about child care and employment is fundamental to improving child and family outcomes.

Each month, the child care subsidy program helps nearly a million low-income families pay for child care. The financial support of a child care subsidy might be expected to increase stability and quality of care, which are characteristics of care that support child development. However, there are concerns that short durations of subsidy receipt may increase child care instability. Further, there is debate about whether subsidy receipt leads to the use of higher or lower quality care. In this study we use longitudinal survey data on low-income families and linked administrative data on subsidy receipt to investigate the stability and reported quality of child care arrangements. Because we observe the same children repeatedly over time, both when they are and are not receiving child care subsidies, we use child fixed-effects models to address the selection problems that otherwise would bias the relationships among subsidy, stability, and quality. We find that when children received child care subsidies they experienced higher quality care as reported by parents. Yet there was no difference in the stability of care arrangements while receiving subsidy compared to when not receiving subsidy. Additionally, children often had multiple providers concurrently, regardless of subsidy receipt. These results suggest that child care subsidy receipt may promote positive child outcomes due to increased access to higher quality care without worsening the stability of care.

Researchers frequently rely on survey responses to determine whether families receive government assistance and to study the effects of government programs, but these responses are often inaccurate. This study investigates misreporting in the child-care subsidy program by comparing survey responses on child-care subsidy receipt with program administrative data in two states. While we find a lower rate of misreporting than is typical for other government assistance programs, overreporting of benefit receipt is surprisingly common and generates overestimates of program participation. Analyses further suggest that the frequency and systematic nature of misreporting bias estimates of the predictors of program receipt and the effects of the program. These findings illustrate the necessity of assessing the frequency of response errors and understanding their implications in generating valid research results on the effects of government programs.

Research Findings: Few studies have described parents' child care decision-making process, yet understanding how parents make child care choices is fundamental to developing effective services to promote the selection of high-quality care. This study used latent profile analysis to distinguish subgroups of low-income parents identified as having commonalities in the number of options, duration, and sources of information sought as part of their child care decision-making process. Study participants included 260 parents who participated in the baseline wave of the Minnesota Child Care Choices study, a longitudinal phone survey of welfare applicants. Two subgroups of parents were identified. The majority of parents (82%) made choices within 2 weeks and considered on average 2 arrangements. Fewer than half of these parents considered information from experts, public lists, or family members/friends when making a child care choice. The remaining 18% of the sample took on average 11 weeks to make a child care ...

Instability in child care arrangements can negatively affect children's development, especially in low-income families. However, few studies have examined what predicts changes over time in child care arrangements. This paper presents findings from a unique multiyear study tracking child care use in low-income families. We estimate rich quantitative models to analyze the relationships among child, household, and care provider characteristics and four different types of changes. We find turnover in child care arrangements to be common in this low-income population. Over a period of six months, half of the children changed primary provider. Child care changes were frequently related to job loss, changes in family composition, or the changing availability of caregivers. While concerns have been raised that short spells of child care subsidy receipt cause child care instability, we found that subsidy use was not associated with higher rates of change. In addition, we found that the lower a parent's assessment...

Few studies have examined correlates of quality ratings in family child care arrangements. This study analyzes data from a multi-state sample of family child care providers actively seeking professional development for two purposes. First, we examine predictors of observed quality ratings focusing on characteristics of child care providers, the most proximal influences of quality in family child care. Second, we explore associations between three targets of professional development (providers’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices) and the pre-academic and social–emotional skills of preschool-aged children. Provider characteristics indicative of personal and professional resources and stress, as well as providers’ professional attitudes and beliefs, are predictive of observed quality measures. Observed quality and providers’ child-centered beliefs and perceptions of job demands are related to children's developmental outcomes. Implications for future research, policies, and practices are discussed.

In just over a decade, quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) have become a central feature of state early care and education systems. This article provides a commentary on work by Elicker a...

Consultation is a promising approach to creating change in early childhood programs, from innovations in instructional strategies to the enhancement of global program quality. Studies of consultation effectiveness have been hampered by limited reports of implementation fidelity related to consultation procedures. This article describes the challenges of supporting and measuring implementation fidelity in a 5-state study in which community consultants followed a collaborative consultation model to enhance global quality in childcare programs. The authors consider the limitations of using a randomized experimental design to study the effectiveness of consultation and share lessons learned in their efforts to enhance treatment fidelity without compromising the basic tenets of the model or the rigorous design.

The relations between social behavior and daily patterns of a stress-sensitive hormone production were examined in preschool children (N = 75) attending center-based child care. Three behavioral dimensions, shy/anxious/internalizing, angry/aggressive/externalizing, and social competence, were assessed by teacher report and classroom observation, and their relations with 2 measures of cortisol activity, median (or typical) levels and reactivity (quartile range score between second and third quartile values) were explored. Cortisol-behavior relations differed by gender: significant associations were found for boys but not for girls. Specifically, for boys externalizing behavior was positively associated with cortisol reactivity, while internalizing behavior was negatively associated with median cortisol. Time of day of cortisol measurement affected the results. Surprisingly, median cortisol levels rose from morning to afternoon, a pattern opposite to that of the typical circadian rhythm of cortisol. This rise in cortisol over the day was positively correlated with internalizing behavior for boys. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings for the study of the development of hormone-behavior relations are discussed.

In this study, we examined a model that describes both direct and indirect pathways between children's temperament and activity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis when children are in peer-group settings. We hypothesize that in peer-group settings both shy, inhibited and exuberant, undercontrolled children would exhibit higher cortisol levels, but these associations would operate through different pathways. Sociometric measures of peer rejection, salivary cortisol, and teacher reports of temperament were collected on 82 preschoolers. Children who were rejected by classmates had higher cortisol levels than the other children. The combination of Surgency and Poor Effortful Control (Effortful Control, reverse scored) was associated with elevated cortisol through a pathway mediated by aggressive interactions with peers and peer rejection. With the indirect path explained, the combination of Surgency and Poor Effortful Control also was directly and negatively associated with classroom cortisol levels. These results help explain why temperament associations with HPA activity have been variable and difficult to discern when children are assessed in peer-group contexts. In these contexts, both direct and indirect pathways between temperament and cortisol need to be examined. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 43: 343–358, 2003.

In this report we use results from evaluations of welfare-to-work programs and findings of basic research on children and families to anticipate the implications for children of the 1996 federal welfare legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA; P.L. 104-193). The new law replaces the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) entitlement program with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant to states. Much of the concern about the possible implications of the legislation has focused on adult recipients, especially whether adults will be able to make a transition to stable employment (McMurrer, Sawhill, & Lerman, 1997; Nightingale, 1997). Yet children comprise the majority of those receiving public assistance. In 1995, approximately two-thirds (9.3 of 13.6 million) of those receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children each month were children (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). Further, provisions of the new legislation, particularly the work requirements, have clear implications for children’s child care situations and experiences within the family. Thus, there is also growing concern about how children may be affected by the new policy (see Blank & Blum, 1997; Collins, 1997; Collins & Aber, 1997; Kisker & Ross, 1997; Knitzer & Bernard, 1997; Larner, Terman, & Behrman, 1997; Moffitt & Slade, 1997; Parcel & Menaghan, 1997). The policy change is too recent for us to have a body of research results focusing specifically on PRWORA and children. Yet research findings from two other sources can aid us in anticipating the implications of the new legislation for children. First, some research in the past decade has extended the use of random assignment evaluation studies of welfare-to-work programs to consider effects on both adults and

We examined 10:30 a.m. salivary cortisol levels in twenty-four 2-year-old children at home, and then at several points during transition into preschool: Week 1, Weeks 6-9, and the 1st week following a month-long holiday break. Cortisol levels did not increase when the children first started school as compared to either home or later school levels. Cortisol levels were correlated across similar, but not across dissimilar, psychosocial contexts. Home levels were correlated wit more shy, anxious, internalizing behavior while the response to starting school was correlated with more assertive, angry, and aggressive behavior. Behavior was assessed using parent temperament reports, teacher reports, and observational measures. We conclude that HPA activity as indexed by salivary cortisol measures is differentially associated with behavior in familiar and novel contexts. Consistent with our prior work, shy/anxious behavior is not significantly associated with elevations in cortisol when young children enter new social situations.

Event‐related potentials were recorded while 5‐year‐olds (N= 44) watched slides of a woman posing happy, angry, and fearful expressions. In 1 session, children were instructed to press a button whenever they saw the happy face, and in another, they were instructed to respond to the fearful face. Four event‐related potential components (N170, P280, N400, and P700) differed in amplitude, latency, or both at right compared to left hemisphere recording sites, and hemispheric differences were present at both anterior (F3, F4) and posterior (T5, T6) recording sites. Hemispheric differences in the amplitude of the P700 were influenced by the task instructions: The P700 was larger at the right posterior than the left posterior recording site for nontarget, but not for target, faces. In contrast, hemispheric differences in the components preceding the P700 were not affected by task instructions. These results suggest that hemispheric differences in brain activity related to recognition of expressions are modulated...

The relations among temperament, social competence, and levels of a stress-sensitive hormone (salivary cortisol) were examined in two studies of preschoolers children (Study 1, N = 29; Study 2, N = 46). In both studies, we sampled cortisol daily for the initial weeks of school year (Group Formation period) and for several weeks later in the year (Familiar Group period). For each child, we examined two measures of cortisol activity (separately for each period) based on the distribution of cortisol levels across days: (a) median cortisol (50th percentile) and (b) cortisol reactivity (the difference between the 75th and 50th percentile). Median cortisol was modestly stable across periods, but cortisol reactivity was not. Children who showed high cortisol reactivity (75th minus 50th percentile > or = 0.10 micrograms/dl) during the Group Formation period but low-to-normal cortisol reactivity during the Familiar Group period were outgoing, competent, and well liked by their peers. In contrast, children who changed from low/normal to high cortisol reactivity and those who maintained high cortisol reactivity from the Group Formation to Familiar Group period were affectively negative and solitary. Children who showed high median cortisol during the Familiar Group period or over both periods scored lower on a measure of attentional and inhibitory control. Together, these results suggest that relations among temperament, social competence, and neuroendocrine reactivity reflect both individual and contextual differences.

This toolkit is an informational resource for state administrators, child care and early education practitioners, and other stakeholders on how QRISs work, how to plan and design QRIS evaluations, and why such evaluations are important.

This report presents findings from an exploratory analysis of administrative data from three QRISs. The analyses examine the prevalence of quality components across centers and how they combine to result in an overall rating level and to predict observed quality.

This report focuses on whether pilot welfare reform programs launched in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota affected children's developmental outcomes. In general, the five state programs achieved their policy goals for adults and increased parental employment, earnings, and in some cases, household income. Overall, there were few impacts on young school-age children, although the programs with the most positive impacts also increased family income. Impacts on adolescents were more frequent and primarily negative.

Even prior to passage of federal welfare reform, many demonstration programs anticipated key features of the 1996 law, such as "work-first" strategies, time limits on welfare receipt, and financial incentives to work. Over the past decade, 10 experimental evaluations of these programs have extended their studies to examine the impacts on children. This article provides a synthesis of findings from the first seven of these studies to release results concerning child impacts. Key observations include the following: Across the different types of welfare-to-work programs examined, researchers found neither widespread harm nor widespread benefit to young children, but some significant impacts did occur. Favorable impacts tended to occur in programs that improved family economic status or maternal education, but these programs still did not bring children to the level of national norms for positive child development. Unfavorable impacts tended to occur when families did not show economic progress or when their economic situation worsened, when the children were adolescents, and--unexpectedly--when the families were believed to be at lower risk for long-term welfare receipt. Thus, although impacts were not widespread, these programs did have the potential to affect children for both better and worse across a range of developmental outcomes. The authors conclude that these findings underscore the importance of strengthening program approaches to enhance developmental outcomes for children in families being served by the welfare system.