Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES) Series

The Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES) is a nationally representative descriptive study of Early Head Start. The first cohort of Baby FACES was fielded in 2009-2012. It used a longitudinal design and followed two age cohorts of children (newborns and 1-year-olds) through their time in Early Head Start. Baby FACES was redesigned in 2015 to employ a repeated cross-sectional approach to provide a comprehensive snapshot of Early Head Start with a nationally representative sample of programs, centers, home visitors, teachers/classrooms, and enrolled families, children of all age groups, and pregnant women in OHS Regions 1 through 10. Using the cross-sectional design, the second cohort of Baby FACES was fielded in the spring of 2018 (Baby FACES 2018) and a third was fielded in the spring 2022 (Baby FACES 2022). Baby FACES 2018 and 2022 have a particular focus on the processes in the classrooms/home visits that support responsive relationships, including teacher–child relationships, staff–parent relationships, and parent–child relationships. These studies address the overarching research question: How do Early Head Start services support infant/toddler growth and development in the context of nurturing, responsive relationships?

The 2018 round concentrated mostly on the classroom context and explored classroom processes and teacher–child relationships in depth with multiple observation-based measures of classrooms and teachers. The 2022 round concentrated mostly on home visiting processes and home visitor-parent and parent-child relationships with observation based measures of home visits and parent-child interactions. of the quality of home visits and parent–child interactions. Both the 2018 and 2022 data collections included surveys of children’s parents, teachers, home visitors, and center and program directors, and classroom observations. In addition, parents and teachers or home visitors completed reports on the children in the sample.

Baby FACES 2009-2012, 2018, and 2022 include different samples, therefore, the data cannot be linked. However, the data can be used to examine aggregate changes over time in the national picture of Early Head Start programs and centers.