Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC) and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), Age 21 Follow Up Study, 1993 - 2003 (ICPSR 32262)
The Carolina Abecedarian (ABC) Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE) projects consist of two consecutive longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of early childhood educational intervention for children at high risk for developmental delays and school failure. Combined, the two studies test the hypothesis that child care, home visit, and home school resource interventions can enhance cognitive and academic outcomes for children at risk for school failure due to factors such as poverty, low maternal IQ, or low parental education. These studies provide the only experimental data regarding the efficacy of child care interventions that began during early infancy and lasted until the child entered kindergarten. In addition, the data allow for tests of the efficacy of intervention during the primary grades.
Research hypotheses include:
- Within this high-risk sample, early cumulative risk will be negatively associated with young adult educational outcomes, employment outcomes, avoidance of teen parenthood, and avoidance of criminal behavior.
- Early intervention will moderate the effects of risk such that the effects of increased risk would be weaker for those who received the intervention than for those who did not.
- The early home environment would mediate any found effects for early risk and that early educational intervention would moderate the effects of the early home environment such that the effects of a poor-quality home environment would be weaker for those who received treatment compared to those who did not.
Further information can be found on the Carolina Abecedarian Project Web site.
Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), United States, 1972-1992 (ICPSR 4091)
The Carolina Abecedarian (ABC) Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE) projects consist of two consecutive longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of early childhood educational intervention for children at high risk for developmental delays and school failure. Combined, the two studies test the hypothesis that child care, home visit, and home school resource interventions can enhance cognitive and academic outcomes for children at risk for school failure due to factors such as poverty, low maternal IQ, or low parental education. These studies provide the only experimental data regarding the efficacy of child care interventions that began during early infancy and lasted until the child entered kindergarten. In addition, the data allow for tests of the efficacy of intervention during the primary grades.
Research hypotheses include:
- Within this high-risk sample, early cumulative risk will be negatively associated with young adult educational outcomes, employment outcomes, avoidance of teen parenthood, and avoidance of criminal behavior.
- Early intervention will moderate the effects of risk such that the effects of increased risk would be weaker for those who received the intervention than for those who did not.
- The early home environment would mediate any found effects for early risk and that early educational intervention would moderate the effects of the early home environment such that the effects of a poor-quality home environment would be weaker for those who received treatment compared to those who did not.
Demographic variables included in this collection: gender, age, level of education.
Chicago Longitudinal Study, 1986-1989 (ICPSR 25921)
The Chicago Longitudinal Study investigates the educational and social development of a same-age cohort of 1,539 low-income, minority children (93 percent African American) who grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods in central-city Chicago and attended government-funded kindergarten programs in the Chicago Public Schools in 1985-1986. Children were at risk of poor outcomes because they face social-environmental disadvantages including neighborhood poverty, family low-income status, and other economic and educational hardships.
Study Goals
The CLS is guided by four major goals:
- To document patterns of school performance and social competence throughout the school-age years, including their school achievement and attitudes, academic progress, and psychosocial development.
- To evaluate the effects of the Child-Parent Center and Expansion Program on child and youth development. Children and families had the opportunity to participate in this unique Head Start type early childhood intervention from ages three to nine (preschool to third grade).
- To identify and better understand the educational and psychosocial pathways through which the effects of early childhood experiences are manifested, and more generally, through which scholastic and behavioral development proceeds.
- To investigate the contributions to children's educational and social development of a variety of personal, family, school, and community factors, especially those that can be altered by program or policy interventions to prevent learning difficulties and promote positive outcomes.
Studies addressing the first two goals have been reported extensively. Participation in the Child-Parent Center Program for different lengths of time, for example, has been found to be significantly associated with higher levels of school achievement into adolescence, with higher levels of consumer skills, with enhanced parent involvement in children's education, and with lower rates of grade retention and special education, lower rates of early school dropout, and with lower rates of delinquent behavior (Reynolds, 1994, 1995, 2000; Reynolds and Temple, 1995, 1998; Temple, Reynolds, and Miedel, in press). Children's patterns of school and social adjustment over time (Reynolds and Bezruczko, 1993; Reynolds and Gill, 1994; Reynolds, 2000) as well as several methodological contributions (Reynolds and Temple, 1995; Reynolds, 1998a, 1998b) also have been reported elsewhere. Examples of studies addressing goals three and four are reported in a special issue of the Journal of School Psychology (Reynolds, 1999).
The Chicago Longitudinal Study is particularly appropriate for addressing these and other goals for two reasons. First, the CLS is one of the most extensive and comprehensive studies undertaken of a low-income, urban sample. Data were collected beginning during children's preschool years and have continued on a yearly basis throughout the school-age years. Multiple sources of data have been utilized in this on-going study, including teacher surveys, child surveys and interviews, parent surveys and interviews, school administrative records, standardized tests, and classroom observations. Thus, the impact of a variety of individual, family, and school-related factors can be investigated.
A second unique feature of the CLS is that although the project concerns child development, an emphasis is given to factors and experiences that are alterable by program or policy intervention both within and outside of schools. Besides information on early childhood intervention, information has been collected on classroom adjustment, parent involvement and parenting practices, grade retention and special education placement, school mobility, educational expectations of children, teachers, and parents, and on the school learning environment.