Rachel A. Gordon

An assessment of the validity of the ECERS-R with implications for measures of child care quality and relations to child development.

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used to associate child care quality with child development, but its validity for this purpose is not well established. We examined the validity of the ECERS-R using the multidimensional Rasch partial credit model (PCM), factor analyses, and regression analyses with data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort. The PCM identified rating category disordering, indicating previously unrecognized problems with the scales response process validity. Factor analyses identified neither a single factor nor the ECERS-R six subscales, replicating prior research regarding the scales structural validity. Criterion validity results were mixed, with small effect sizes for regressions predicting child outcomes and moderate effect sizes for regressions predicting teacher-reported quality. Our results lend empirical support to recent critiques of the ECERS-R, and we discuss implications for its future use and for the development of future measures.

Availability of child care in the United States: A description and analysis of data sources

Lack of high-quality, affordable, and accessible child care is an often-cited impediment to a manageable balance between work and family. Researchers, however, have been restricted by a scarcity of data on the availability of child care across all U.S. communities. In this paper we describe and evaluate several indicators of child care availability that have been released by the U.S. Census Bureau over the last 15 years. Using community- and individual-level analyses, we find that these data sources are useful for indicating child care availability within communities, even though they were collected for other purposes. Furthermore, our results generally suggest that the data on child care availability are equally valid across communities of different urbanicity and average income levels, although it appears that larger geographic areas more accurately capture the child care market of centers than that of family day care providers. Our analyses indicate that center child care is least available in nonmetropolitan, poor communities, and that family day care is most available in nonmetropolitan, mixed-income communities. We discuss the benefits and limitations of the data sources, and point to directions for future data developments and research.

The effects of maternal employment on child injuries and infectious disease

This article presents estimates of effects of maternal paid work and nonmaternal child care on injuries and infectious disease for children aged 12 to 36 months. Mother-child fixed-effects estimates are obtained by using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Estimates indicate that maternal employment itself has no statistically significant adverse effects on the incidence of infectious disease and injury. However, greater time spent by children in center-based care is associated with increased rates of respiratory problems for children aged 12 to 36 months and increased rates of ear infections for children aged 12 to 24 months.

Family and neighborhood income: additive and multiplicative associations with youths’ well-being☆

Abstract The present study extends prior research on additive and multiplicative ways by which family and neighborhood income relate to youths’ well-being. Integrating substantive and methodological concepts, we demonstrate how various hypotheses would be revealed empirically with continuous income measures and clarify the relationship among different conceptual models. Substantively, we highlight ways in which match and mismatch between family and neighborhood income may encourage positive or negative social comparisons and may influence youths’ ability to participate in social networks and to access enriching resources. We illustrate these models using a sample of 877 primarily white boys and girls representatively drawn from three US communities. We find that youths’ receptive vocabulary is more strongly positively related to income in one context (family or neighborhood) when income is low in the other context (neighborhood or family), particularly for white children. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and impairment of daily functioning are highest among youth who live in contexts where their families’ financial circumstances are advantaged or deprived in relation to their neighbors.

Modeling Trajectories in Social Program Outcomes for Performance Accountability.

Government and public focus on accountability for program outcomes, combined with practical and ethical constraints on experimental designs, make nonexperimental studies of social programs an increasingly common approach to producing information on program performance. In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of alternative nonexperimental evaluation methods used with longitudinal data to produce information about social program outcomes. The analysis is applied in an evaluation of a demonstration program designed to help young parents and their partners make the transition from receiving public transfer income to earned income. Empirical findings indicate that modeling outcome trajectories using multilevel methods generates more complete information about the nature of the program effects, relative to standard econometric alternatives as commonly applied in evaluations. With increased access to sources of administrative and management information system data covering multiple time points, we urge researchers to help social policy and program decision-makers appropriately model and produce more accurate information on program outcomes.

Early Child Care and Illness among Preschoolers

The majority of young American children regularly spend time in nonparental care settings. Such arrangements are associated with their experiences of common childhood illnesses. Why this linkage exists, how it varies across the socioeconomic spectrum, and whether it has implications for how parents arrange care are all important theoretical and policy issues. In this study, therefore, we applied a fixed-effects design within structural equation modeling to data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,364). Results revealed that children were sick more often when cared for in a center and had more peer exposure in their primary care settings, although this latter association was observed only among children of the least educated mothers. Net of such factors, children in multiple arrangements did not experience more illness, but illnesses tended to decrease subsequent peer exposure as parents changed children’s care arrangements.

Identifying High-Quality Preschool Programs: New Evidence on the Validity of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised (ECERS-R) in Relation to School Readiness Goals

Research Findings: The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used, often to evaluate whether preschool programs are of sufficient quality to improve children’s school readiness. We examined the validity of the measure for this purpose. Item response theory (IRT) analyses revealed that many items did not fit together to measure single dimensions, particularly when rated by consultants as indicating aspects of quality relevant for multiple domains of child development. IRT results also conflicted with the scale developers’ expectations in terms of whether markers that they attached to higher response categories represented higher quality empirically. When reanalyzed based on experts’ ratings, IRT results also showed that relatively few indicators captured the moderate to high range of quality. Practice or Policy: Our results suggest that policymakers should carefully consider whether measures designed for specific purposes are appropriate for other high-stakes uses. We encourage continued refinement of existing quality measures, development of new measures, and the accumulation of evidence for their various uses.

The Child and Adult Care Food Program: Who Is Served and Why?

This article focuses on an understudied food subsidy program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), examining whether it reaches low-income children and whether children who receive CACFP differ from those who do not receive it. Data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, which provides a representative sample of preschoolers and their providers. This study finds that CACFP eligibility rules exclude many low-income children from participation, especially children residing in high-income areas. In multivariate models, greater socioeconomic disadvantage among low-income children is correlated with greater chances of receiving CACFP; the perception that there are few local care choices is found to diminish participation. Characteristics of CACFP-participating providers suggest that standard transaction costs, administrative burdens, and information networks all affect take-up of CACFP. The study concludes by discussing the implications of the findings, especially in relation to other food and child-care subsidy programs.

Physical attractiveness and the accumulation of social and human capital in adolescence and young adulthood: assets and distractions.

Beauty has a well-documented impact on labor market outcomes with both legal and policy implications. This monograph investigated whether this stratification is rooted in earlier developmental experiences. Specifically, we explored how high schools’ dual roles as contexts of social relations and academic progress contributed to the long-term socioeconomic advantages of being physically attractive. Integrating theories from multiple disciplines, the conceptual model of this study contends that physically attractive youths’ greater social integration and lesser social stigma help them accumulate psychosocial resources that support their academic achievement while also selecting them into social activities that distract from good grades. A mixed methods design, combining statistical analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and qualitative analyses of a single high school, supported and expanded this model. The data revealed that the benefits of attractiveness flowed through greater social integration but were partially offset by social distractions, especially romantic/sexual partnerships and alcohol-related problems. Interview and ethnographic data further revealed that adolescents themselves understood how physical attractiveness could lead to favorable treatment by teachers and classmates while also enticing youth to emphasize socializing and dating, even when the latter took time from other activities (like studying) and marginalized some classmates. These patterns, in turn, predicted education, work, family, and mental health trajectories in young adulthood. The results of this interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed methods study suggest that adolescence may be a critical period in stratification by physical appearance and that the underlying developmental phenomena during this period are complex and often internally contradictory. The monograph concludes with discussion of theoretical and policy implications and recommendations for future developmental research.

Examining the Category Functioning of the ECERS-R Across Eight Data Sets

Classroom quality measures, such as the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Revised (ECERS-R), are widely used in research, practice, and policy. Increasingly, these uses have been for purposes not originally intended, such as contributing to consequential policy decisions. The current study adds to the recent evidence of problems with the ECERS-R standard stop-scoring by analyzing eight studies offering 14 waves of data collection in approximately 4,000 classrooms. Our analysis, which featured the nominal response model, generalized partial credit model, partial credit model, within-category averages of total scores, and point-biserial correlations, revealed that all 36 items had categories that did not follow an ordinal progression with respect to quality. Additionally, our results showed that the category problems accumulated to the scale score. The results caution against the use of the standard raw scoring and encourage development of alternative scoring methods for the ECERS-R.