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Early Head Start (EHS) programs are comprehensive, two-generation programs that focus on enhancing children's development while strengthening families. Designed for low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers up to age 3, Early Head Start programs strive to achieve their goals by designing program options based on family and community needs. Programs may offer one or more options to families, including a home-based option, a center-based option, a combination option in which families receive a prescribed number of home visits and center-based experiences, and locally designed options, which in some communities include family child care.

The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation (EHSRE) Study was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) and included five major components: (1) an implementation study; (2) an impact evaluation, using an experimental design; (3) local research studies to learn about pathways to desired outcomes; (4) policy studies to respond to information needs in areas of emerging policy-relevant issues; and (5) continuous program improvement. The study involved 3,001 children and families in 17 sites representing diverse program models, racial/ethnic makeup, urban-rural location, program auspice, and program experience in serving infants and toddlers. Three phases comprise the collection: Birth to Three ("0-3"), Pre-Kindergarten ("PreK") Follow-up and the Elementary School ("G5") Follow-up. A brief description of each phase is provided below:

• Birth to Three Phase (1996-2001): included a cross-site national study that encompassed an Impact Evaluation and Implementation Study that investigated program impacts on children and families through their time in the program as well as site-specific research conducted by local research projects.
• Pre-Kindergarten Follow-up Phase (2001-2005) : built upon the earlier research and followed the children and families who were in the original study from the time they left the Early Head Start program until they entered kindergarten. It was designed to document the long-term consequences of receiving either Early Head Start services or other community services up until age 3 combined with subsequent Head Start or other formal early care and education programs on children's school readiness and parent functioning.
• Elementary School Follow-up Phase (2005-2010): assessed children and families when the children were fifth graders or attending their sixth year of formal schooling. The study included direct assessments of children's cognitive, socio-emotional, and physical development; parent interviews; teacher questionnaires; and videotaping of maternal-child interactions.

The Early Head Start findings are based on a mixture of direct child assessments, observations of children's behavior by in-person interviewers, ratings of videotaped parent-child interactions in standardized ways, ratings of children's behaviors by their parents, and parents' self-reports of their own behaviors, attitudes, and circumstances. Data in this collection were constructed by the Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) researchers for use in their analyses. Very few of the original source variables are present in this public-use file. The constructs came from several data sources:

1. Baseline data, which were collected from the Head Start Family Information System (HSFIS) program application and enrollment forms and the MPR Tracking System. These data contain information on the program status of each case, characteristics of the applicant, mother, and focus child from the MPR Tracking System, summary variables pertaining to all family members, and information on the father, on family circumstances, on the mother's pregnancy, and on the focus child.

2. Parent services follow-up interviews (PSI) targeted for 6, 15, and 26 months after random assignment. These data contain information on use of services both in and outside of Early Head Start, progress toward economic self-sufficiency, family health, and children's health.

3. Parent interviews (BPI) targeted for completion when children were 14, 24, and 36 months old. These interviews obtained a large amount of information from the primary caregivers about their child's development and family functioning. Specific questions asked of parents in the parent interview included items about raising a baby, child's health, household composition, child care, mother figure, father figure, family routines, parents' and parent-child activities, child behavior, and stressful events.

4. Child and family assessments targeted for administration when children were 14, 24, and 36 months old. Field interviewers recorded information from their observations of children's behavior and home environments. Direct child assessments included Bayley Assessments, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Tests (PPVTs), and videotaped semi-structured parent-child interactions.

5. Child care provider interviews and observations targeted for administration when children were 14, 24, and 36 months old. Interview and observation data were collected from child care providers for children who were in child care arrangements that met particular criteria when they were approximately 14, 24 and 36 months old. Different data collection instruments were used for children in child care centers and children cared for by family child care providers or relatives. Data from both types of providers may be used together for some types of analyses.

6. Father interviews targeted for collection when children were 24 and 36 months old. In addition to asking mothers about their child's father, biological fathers and father figures in 12 sites were interviewed directly about fathering issues at the time of the 24- and 36-month birthday-related interviews (but not when children were 14 months old).

Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act authorizes states, with the incentive of federal financial support, to create Early Intervention (EI) systems, which is a primary source of rehabilitation (e.g., physical, occupational, and speech therapy) services for infants and toddlers with, or at risk for, developmental delays. Having worked with two EI Colorado (EI-CO) programs that employed electronic documentation, the researchers sought to leverage their electronic administrative data in order to examine social disparities in EI service use, including specific rehabilitation services.

The dataset for this data archiving project was generated in collaboration with a large, urban EI program in Colorado, a community partner for an NIH/NCMRR R03 study. This academic-community research partnership provided researchers with access to an urban EI program's electronic administrative database; The researchers' goal was to make these data available for further EI research. Therefore, a database was created and a number of variables were derived that could be of importance to EI stakeholders when conducting clinical queries for quality improvement. Examples of derived variables include EI service use intensity (i.e., hours per month) for all EI services, as well as discipline-specific (e.g., physical or occupational therapy) service use. The researchers obtained permission from the partnering EI agency to archive their EI program data through this project.

The dataset included as part of this collection includes 2045 cases for 44 variables; demographic variables include: race, ethnicity, language, sex, age, and developmental condition type.

The ethnographic fieldwork portion of the project - interviews with women of reproductive age, and when available their partners and mothers - was initiated and completed in 2006. For each of four Italian cities (Padua, Bologna, Cagliari, and Naples) studied ethnographically by trained anthropologists, both a working-class and a middle-class neighborhood were identified. These interviews (349 in number) have been transcribed without identifiers. All interviews have been coded and assigned 'attributes' (or nominative variables, such as gender, civil/religious status of marriage, etc.) using the qualitative data analysis software (NVIVO), and these reside in secure electronic project folders. This large body of qualitative interview data is now complete and ready for use across the international collaborative units. Preliminary research reveals the particular significance of family ties in Italy, the fundamental role played by gender systems, and the specific cultural, socio-economic, and politic contexts in which fertility behavior and parenting are embedded.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

309 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 3 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables, along with site differences, were examined. A set of variables that were psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-42 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Datasets. These data files comprise Parts 43-55 of the study data material.

3. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 56-309 of the study data material.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

193 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 3 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables along with site differences were examined. A set of variables that was psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-24 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Data Sets. These data files comprise Parts 25-27 of the study data material.

3. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 28-193 of the study data material.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

504 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 4 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables along with site differences were examined. A set of variables that was psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-49 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Data Sets. These data files comprise Parts 50-55 of the study data material.

3. Raw Census-Related Data Sets -- Files were produced using geocoded addresses for survey respondents to match block group level data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses for investigators to create additional measures of interest from the geocoded addresses. These data files comprise Parts 56-58 of the study data material.

4. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 59-505 of the study data material.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.