Child Care for Working Poor Families: Child Development and Parent Employment Outcomes: Community Child Care Research Project, Final Report

Authors

James Elicker, Purdue University
Carolyn Clawson, Purdue University
Soo-Young Hong, University of Nebraska at LincolnFollow
Tae-Eun Kim, Purdue University
Demetra Evangelou, Purdue University
Susan J. Kontos, Purdue University

ORCID IDs

Soo-Young Hong

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

3-2005

Citation

Community Child Care Research Project, Final Report. Purdue University, 2005. 134 p.

Comments

Project Web site: http://www.cfs.purdue.edu/cccrp/. Copyright 2005, Purdue University. Used by permission.

Abstract

The results of the Community Child Care Research Project provide new data describing the child care experiences of low income working families in 4 communities in Indiana. Because the study participants were volunteers rather than randomly selected, and because the research design was correlational rather than experimental, conclusions drawn from these fi ndings necessarily have limitations. The fi ndings cannot be confi dently generalized to other low income working families and child care providers, nor can the links between child care quality and children’s development be assumed to be causal. For example, while it is quite possible that higher quality child care does support better child development outcomes, it is also plausible that families whose children have more advanced levels of development found and used higher quality child care. Despite these limitations, the research results do represent the recent experiences of more than 300 low income working families, their children, and their child care providers. The results suggest a number of key issues that need further investigation by policy makers and researchers.