Observing and Assessing Infant Day Care Environment.

This paper describes data collection procedures for the part of the New York City Infant Day Care Study concerned with day care environment and caregiver-child interaction. This study is a 5-year, longitudinal investigation in which infants in group and family day care programs and infants reared at home are compared. Study data will be collected from two major sources: (1) observation of each child in his/her usual day care environment (at 6-month intervals), and (2) interviews with the child's caregiver(s) (once a year). The systematic observation and recording of aspects of the behavior of both the child and the caregiver are described as they occur during a typical day of observation. The child, rather than the caregiver, is the major focus of observation. An annual interview with the caregiver is also described. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons of the data will be made at three levels of analysis: the global assessment (a superordinate score provided by the Infant Day Care Environment Index--IDCEI), the subscales which comprise the IDCEI, and specific hypotheses. (ED)