Variation in Early Childhood Program Impacts by Race, Urbanicity, and Quality

描述（由申请人提供）：研究一直显示幼儿教育和家长支持计划对幼儿的认知，学术和行为发展的积极影响。与此同时，相对而言，很少有研究评估这些方案对特定儿童群体可能或多或少有效。随着美国学龄前儿童的人口在种族和民族上变得越来越多样化和城市化，了解幼儿计划有效性的潜在差异对于确保所有儿童公平获得高质量的服务比以往任何时候都更加重要。 拟议研究的第一个目的是测试 早期儿童教育（ECE）、家庭支持（FS）以及ECE/FS联合方案的有效性因方案的种族/民族构成或城市化程度而异。特别是，这项研究将测试这些程序对儿童的认知，学术和行为结果的影响是更大还是更小的程序服务主要是西班牙裔，黑人，或白色儿童，或位于城市，郊区，或农村的方案。除了了解影响变化的基本差异，本研究的第二个和第三个目标将进一步测试这些差异是否可能与在这些不同的背景下提供给儿童的节目质量有关。特别是，目标2将评估方案的种族/民族构成和城市化之间的关系，以及每种类型的节目中向儿童提供的节目的质量，全面性和强度。最后，目标3将测试基于种族/民族组成或城市化的计划影响的差异是否可归因于计划质量的相关差异。 为了实现这些目标，本研究将利用两个互补的数据来源：1）全国幼儿政策和计划论坛的元分析数据库，该数据库涵盖了40多年的幼儿研究，以及2）全国代表性的实验性先行影响研究。这些数据集的使用将赋予这一领域过去工作的几个重要优势，包括同时探索多种计划类型（包括Meta分析中的ECE、FS和ECE/FS组合，以及HSIS中的Head Start）的能力，质量特征（包括质量、全面性和强度的客观指数）， 荟萃分析，以及观察到的质量互动在HSIS），和儿童的结果（包括认知，学术和行为结果在两个数据集）。此外，这些研究将使用互补的分析技术，明确说明相关的，潜在的混淆特征，如儿童和邻里水平的社会经济劣势。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research has consistently shown positive impacts of early childhood education and parent support programs on young children's cognitive, academic, and behavioral development. At the same time, comparatively little research has evaluated the ways that these programs may be more or less effective for particular groups of children. As the population of preschool-aged children in the United States becomes increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and urban, understanding potential differences in early childhood program effectiveness is more critical than ever for ensuring equitable access to high quality services for all children. The first aim of the proposed study is to test whether the effectiveness of early childhood education (ECE), family support (FS), and combined ECE/FS programs differ based on programs' racial/ethnic composition or urbanicity. In particular, this study will test whether these programs' impacts on children's cognitive, academic, and behavioral outcomes are larger or smaller for programs serving predominantly Hispanic, black, or white children, or for programs located in urban, suburban, or rural contexts. In addition to understand basic differences in impact variation, the second and third aims of the present study will further test whether these differences may relate to the quality of programming offered to children in these different contexts. In particular, Aim 2 will evaluate the relationships between programs' racial/ethnic composition and urbanicity, and the quality, comprehensiveness, and intensity of programming offered to children in each type of programming. Finally, Aim 3 will test whether observed differences in program impacts based on racial/ethnic composition or urbanicity may be attributed to related differences in program quality. To accomplish these aims, this study will make use of two complementary data sources: 1) the National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs' meta-analytic database, which spans more than four decades of early childhood research, and 2) the nationally representative, experimental Head Start Impact Study. The use of these datasets will confer several important advantages over past work in this area, including the ability to simultaneously explore multiple program types (including ECE, FS, and combined ECE/FS in the meta- analysis, and Head Start in the HSIS), features of quality (including objective indices of quality, comprehensiveness and intensity in the meta-analysis, as well as observed quality interactions in the HSIS), and child outcomes (including cognitive, academic, and behavioral outcomes in both datasets). In addition, these studies will use complementary analytic techniques to explicitly account for related, potentially confounding characteristics such as child- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage.