Child-care quality and children's social development.

Abstract

This study examined the influence on children's social development of variation in the quality of their child-care environments. The sample consisted of 166 children attending representative childcare centers that varied widely in quality. Possible relations associated with age, child-care experience, and family background were controlled using hierarchical multiple regression. Both global estimates of child-care quality and specific program features, such as director experience, ratios, and verbal interactions, were obtained from observational measures and staff questionnaires. Measures of social development were derived from parent and caregiver ratings of the children. Of greatest importance is the finding that overall quality, caregiver-child verbal interactions, and director experience were each highly predictive of the children's social development in child care. Family background measures were also significantly predictive of several of the social outcomes, whereas childcare experience showed few significant effects. The implications for social policies and future research in child care are discussed. The developmental effects of child care have long held interest for psychologists, first because child care represented an intriguing exception to parental care, and now because some form of child care is the norm for over half of all American children. Parallel with these demographic trends, the research literature has shifted from questions that entail comparisons of home-reared children and those enrolled in child care to more sophisticated questions about how children in child care are affected by differences in program quality (Belsky, 1984; Clarke-Stewart & Fein, 1983). A related issue concerns the identification of specific quality indicators that affect child development. A third, relatively new, empirical focus is on the joint effects of child care and family variables (Everson, Sarnat, &