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NATIONAL CHILD CARE STAFFING STUDY (NCCSS)
The National Child Care Staffing Study (NCCSS) is a longitudinal study of child care centers conducted in 1988, 1992, and 1997. The description of the study provided here focuses on the original (1988) study. See the reference section for a comparison of the three waves.
Purpose
The 1988 National Child Care Staffing Study (NCCSS) explored how child care teaching staff and their working conditions influenced the quality of center-based child care available in the United States. To address gaps in the child care literature, the NCCSS addressed four major policy questions:
- Who teaches in America’s child care centers?
- What do they contribute to the quality of care provided?
- Do centers that meet or fail to meet nationally established quality guidelines, that operate under different financial and legal auspices, and that serve families from different socioeconomic backgrounds also differ in the quality of care offered to children or the work environments offered to their staff?
- How have center-based child care services changed from 1977 to 1988?
For more information:
Whitebook, M., Howes, C., & Phillips, D. (1990). Who cares? Child care teachers and the quality of care in America. Final report: National Child Care Staffing Study. Oakland, CA: Child Care Employee Project.
Agencies/Institutions
“The [1988] National Child Care Staffing Study was coordinated by the staff of the Child Care Employee Project and funded by a consortium of foundations including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation, and the Spunk Fund, Inc.” (Whitebook, Howes, & Phillips, 1990, p. ii). Marcy Whitebook, Carollee Howes, and Deborah Phillips, the principal investigators of the NCCSS, worked (at the time of the 1988 study) at the Child Care Employee Project, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Virginia, respectively. The sponsor of the study, the Child Care Employee Project, changed its name to the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW) in 1997. (CCW was known as the National Center for the Early Childhood Work Force between 1994 and 1997.) In November 2002, CCW became a program within the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation (AFTEF).
Research/Survey Design
NCCSS was conducted longitudinally, beginning in 1988with a cross-section of 227 child care centers in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Phoenix, and Seattle. These metropolitan areas were selected because they varied greatly in four characteristics: “(1) the level of quality (low to high) required by each state’s child care regulations, (2) geographic region, (3) relative distributions of for-profit and non-profit child care centers, and (4) the attention accorded child care staffing issues in state and local policy initiatives. Our interest in tracking trends in center-based child care since the National Day Care Study was conducted in 1977 also influenced our selection of sites. …A two-part strategy was used in each Study site to generate a sample of child care centers serving low-, middle-, and high-income families in urban and suburban neighborhoods. …First, the eligible pool of centers was identified from updated lists of licensed child care centers. …The final sample of participating centers was selected from the eligible pool using a stratified, random sampling strategy. …In each center, three classrooms were randomly selected to be observed, one each from among all infant, toddler, and preschool classrooms. …Two staff members—one teacher or teacher director…and one assistant or aide… from each participating classroom were randomly chosen to be interviewed and observed” (Whitebook et al., 1990, pp. 13, 16, 19, 20).
The NCCSS focused only on center-based programs that served children through 5 years of age, operated at least 11 months a year for a minimum of 6 hours a day, served a minimum of 15 children, and employed no fewer than six staff members. It did not provide a nationally representative sample of all child care centers but instead “sought to capture the diversity of the nation’s centers in numbers approximating their distribution in the five Study sites” (Whitebook et al., 1990, p. 13). Data collection for the original study consisted of classroom observation and interviews with center directors and teaching staff. In Atlanta, children’s socioemotional, language, and cognitive development were also assessed.
For more information:
Whitebook, M., Howes, C., & Phillips, D. (1990). Who cares? Child care teachers and the quality of care in America. Final report: National Child Care
Date(s)/Periodicity
Data were collected between February and August 1988, with follow-ups in 1992 and 1997.
Population/Sample
The original study sample consisted of 227 child care centers in five metropolitan areas; within these 227 centers, researchers observed 643 classrooms and interviewed 1,309 teaching staff (including both teachers and assistant teachers). The response rate for centers averaged 61%, and nearly all the sampled teachers at the participating sites agreed to be interviewed and observed. “In summary, there is some potential for bias in the sample given the higher participation rates for nonprofit than for-profit centers, centers serving low-income families, and centers that may offer somewhat higher quality care than is typical in the Study sites [metropolitan areas]. However, as a result of the stratified, replacement sampling strategy, the final sample of centers closely matches the distribution of centers across Census tracts and urban and suburban residential areas” (Whitebook et al., 1990, p. 19).
Because of the decision to focus on five metropolitan areas, the NCCSS did not provide a nationally representative sample of all child care centers but instead “sought to capture the diversity of the nation’s centers in numbers approximating their distribution in the five Study sites. …The participating sites [metropolitan areas], as planned, are highly diverse with respect to their economic contexts, demographics, and regulatory climates” (Whitebook et al., 1990, pp.13, 14).
The five metropolitan areas were ethnically diverse, with a variety of racial and ethnic groups represented. Blacks were the largest minority group in Atlanta and Detroit, Hispanics were the largest in Phoenix, and Asians and Native Americans formed the greatest portion of the minority population in Seattle. About one-third of teaching staff in the 1988 sample belonged to racial or ethnic minorities, and in all metropolitan areas, the percentage of minorities was larger in the teaching staff than in the area as a whole. The NCCSS selected centers that served children through 5 years of age, and “across all participating centers, the research team observed 643 classrooms [in 1988]: 85 (13%) infant, 151 (23%) toddler, 313 (49%) preschool, and 94 (15%) mixed-age classrooms” (Whitebook et al., 1990, p. 19). In Atlanta, the sample of 255 children consisted of 36% infants, 22% toddlers, and 42% preschoolers.
For more information:
Whitebook, M., Howes, C., & Phillips, D. (1990). Who Cares? Child Care Teachers and the Quality of Care in America. Final Report: National Child Care Staffing Study. Oakland, CA: Child Care Employee Project.
Content Covered
In the original study, “classroom observations and interviews with center directors and staff provided data on center characteristics and program quality, and on staff qualifications, commitment, and compensation. In Atlanta, child assessments were also conducted to examine the effects on children of such center and staff attributes as program quality and staff training” (Whitebook et al., 1990, p. 11). The instruments used in 1988 in all metropolitan areas included a director interview protocol, a teaching staff interview protocol, the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS; Harms & Clifford, 1980), the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS; Harms & Clifford, 1986), a classroom structure measure, and the Arnett scale of teacher sensitivity (Arnett, 1989). The measures are described in detail on pages 21 through 28 of Whitebook, Howes, and Phillips (1990). Pages 25 to 28 of that report discuss the additional measures employed in the Atlanta sample.
The following constructs were measured by the 1988 NCCSS:
- Child development environment: developmentally appropriate activity, ratio, group size, grouping of children, staffing patterns
- Adult work environment: wages, benefits, working conditions, job satisfaction, budget allocations for personnel, sources of income
- Teacher characteristics: formal education, early childhood education, experience in child care Teacher child interaction: appropriate caregiving (sensitivity, harshness, detachment)
- Children’s development: attachment security, sociability, communication skills, picture vocabulary test, time with peers, aimless wandering (assessed socio-emotional, language, and cognitive development of all children in Atlanta sample)
- Teacher turnover: 12-month director’s report and 6-month staff report
For more information:
Whitebook, M., Howes, C., & Phillips, D. (1990). Who cares? Child care teachers and the quality of care in America. Final report: National Child Care Staffing Study. Oakland, CA: Child Care Employee Project.
Availability of Data for Public Use
Data sets for the NCCSS are not available on the Internet. The NCCSS does not currently have a website, but the website for the sponsoring organization, the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), is http://www.ccw.org/home/. Contact information for CCW is as follows:
Center for the Child Care Workforce
A Project of the AFT Educational Foundation
555 New Jersey Avenue,
NW Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-662-8005
Fax: 202-662-8006
Email: ccw@aft.org
Reference List for Users’ Guide, Codebooks, Methodology Report(s)
The final reports for the 1988 study and its two follow-ups are available for purchase from the CCW website, although they should soon be available for free on the site itself.
Descriptions of the three waves for the longitudinal NCCSS follow: The original study, Who Cares? Child Care Teachers and the Quality of Care in America (1990), “profiled the demographic characteristics, professional preparation, quality, turnover, pay and working conditions of center-based child care workers in the United States.” For the first follow-up, The National Child Care Staffing Study Revisited Four Years in the Life of Center-Based Child Care (1993), the NCCSS research team “returned [in 1992] to the original staffing study sites to assess changes in wages, benefits, and turnover. Through interviews with 225 center directors across the nation, this follow-up study found meager improvement in teaching staff wages, identified in the original findings as the most important predictor of child care services.” The most recent wave in the NCCSS, Worthy Work, Unlivable Wages: The National Child Care Staffing Study, 1988–1997 (1998), was conducted in 1997. “Nine years after the original National Child Care Staffing Study, we interviewed directors at the centers still in operation to assess changes in wages, benefits and turnover; whether increases in public investment for child care have benefited the child care workforce; and the extent to which former welfare recipients are employed in center-based child care”
(http://www.ccw.org/tpp/pubs/studies.html).
Arnett, J. (1989). Caregivers in day-care centers: Does training matter? Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 10, 541–552.
Harms, T., & Clifford, R. (1980). Early childhood Environment Rating Scale. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.
Harms, T., & Clifford, R. (1986). Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale. Unpublished document, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Whitebook, M., Howes, C., & Phillips, D. (1990). Who cares? Child care teachers and the quality of care in America. Final report: National Child Care Staffing Study. Oakland, CA: Child Care Employee Project.
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