Early Head Start-Child Care (EHS-CC) Partnerships, United States, 2016-2022

The Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (EHS-CCP) datasets contains data from two studies: (1) the 2016 National Descriptive Study (the NDS), which collected information about the 2015 EHS-CC Partnerships grantees and their child care partners (including child care centers and family child care providers) and the activities they engaged in to develop and maintain partnerships and meet the Head Start Program Performance Standards, assess their quality improvement needs, and support high quality caregiving and learning environments for infants and toddlers; and (2) the 2022 EHS-CCP Sustainability Study (the Sustainability Study), a follow-up study of the 2016 NDS, which collected information about how partnerships from the first round of grants had fared as of 2022 and factors that supported or impeded partnership sustainability. Both studies were conducted by Mathematica. The NDS collected data through web-based surveys of grantee directors and a sample of child care directors and family child care providers. The Sustainability Study collected data using web-based surveys of EHS program directors and child care providers in sustained and dissolved partnerships. It also collected qualitative data using semi-structured interviews to provide more in-depth information from purposively selected providers in sustained and dissolved partnerships. (Both NDS and Sustainability Study analyses of EHS programs are conducted at the grant level, with information about partnerships between providers and any delegate agencies rolled up to the level of the EHS-CCP grant. The term "program" is used in the Sustainability Study. Previously, in the NDS, "grantee" was used to refer to the same level of analysis.) The responses to the survey of grantees and their delegate agencies produced three NDS datasets. The first dataset, Partnership Grantee and Delegate Agency Director Survey, contains data from a survey of Early Head Start grantees and their delegate agencies. This dataset contains questions answered by the grantee or delegate agencies about themselves and contains one observation per grantee. Datasets two and three are also associated with the grantee and delegate agency survey. The second dataset, Grantee and Delegate Agencies Partner Characteristics, contains responses to the initial survey from the grantee or delegate regarding characteristics of all of their child care partners. This dataset was used to create a random sampling of approximately 20 percent of the child care partners for additional questions as well as a separate Child Care Partner survey, which were used to create both datasets three and four. Dataset three, Grantee and Delegate Agencies Randomly Sampled Partner Characteristics, contains responses from grantee and delegate agencies regarding the partners identified by the random sampling created from dataset two. The second survey conducted by Mathematica was of these selected child care partners, and dataset four, Child Care Partner Survey, is comprised of responses to questions asked of the child care partners about themselves. Demographic information contained in these datasets includes education level, degree field, length of occupation, and occupation. The Sustainability Study examined how partnerships from the first round of grants had fared as of 2022 and factors that supported or impeded partnership sustainability. The Sustainability Study also looks at features of sustained partnerships (partnerships from the NDS that were still in place at the time of the Sustainability Study) as well as active partnerships (which include sustained partnerships as well as those that are new since the NDS, and regardless of whether they are funded through an EHS-CC Partnerships grant). There are four Sustainability Study data files. Two program director survey files (one at the program level, and one at the provider level, for information about individual child care providers reported by the program director), one child care provider survey file, and one file containing transcripts of semi-structured interviews with dissolved and sustained partnership providers. <b>Citation</b> Skidmore, S., Clochard, A., Carlson, B., Doran, E., Cannon, J., Bernstein, S., Albanese, S., Del Grosso, P., and Xue, Y. (2023). Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships Sustainability Study Data Documentation. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.