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

描述(由申请者提供)：研究一直表明，幼儿教育和父母支持计划对幼儿的认知、学业和行为发展具有积极影响。与此同时，很少有研究评估这些项目对特定儿童群体或多或少有效的方式。随着美国学龄前儿童人口的种族和民族日益多样化和城市化，了解幼儿计划有效性的潜在差异对于确保所有儿童平等地获得高质量服务比以往任何时候都更加关键。拟议研究的第一个目的是测试 幼儿教育、家庭支助和综合幼儿教育/家庭支助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项目对儿童认知、学业和行为结果的影响，对于主要服务于西班牙裔、黑人或白人儿童的项目，或者位于城市、郊区或农村背景的项目，影响是大还是小。除了了解影响差异的基本差异外，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背景下向儿童提供的节目的质量有关。特别是，目标2将评估节目的种族/民族构成与城市化之间的关系，以及在每种类型的节目中向儿童提供的节目的质量、综合性和强度之间的关系。最后，目标3将测试观察到的基于种族/民族构成或都市性的计划影响的差异是否可能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)全国幼儿政策和项目论坛的元分析数据库，跨越40多年的幼儿研究；2)具有全国代表性的实验性Head Start影响研究。这些数据集的使用将赋予这一领域以往工作的几个重要优势，包括能够同时探索多种方案类型(包括在元分析中的欧洲经委会、FS和欧洲经委会/FS的组合，以及在HSIS中的先行先试)、质量特征(包括质量、全面性和强度的客观指数 元分析，以及在HSIS中观察到的质量交互作用)，以及儿童结果(包括两个数据集中的认知、学习和行为结果)。此外，这些研究将使用互补的分析技术来明确说明相关的、潜在的混淆特征，如儿童和社区层面的社会经济劣势。

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.