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New Briefs and Tools Capture Range of Hispanic Experiences in Early Care and Education

insight A new set of briefs and online tools serve as a clearinghouse for information on Hispanic experiences in early care and education settings in the U.S.
Hispanic children represent approximately one in four children in the U.S. By 2050, they are expected to represent one in three, similar to the proportion of white children. Therefore, the health and education of Hispanic children will have an increasingly profound impact on the social and economic well-being of America.

Early care and education settings – including home- and center-based child care for young children – represent a key developmental arena for children and a critical work support for families. Substantial evidence shows that high-quality early care and education (ECE) experiences can promote the healthy development of children, so the federal government has invested in a range of ECE programs.

A new series of data briefs and interactive tools for researchers, published by the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Familiesled by Abt Global and Child Trends with university partners University of North Carolina Greensboro, New York University, and University of Maryland College Park – shows how Hispanic families perceive, access, and experience early ECE settings. The series, entitled “Using Existing Large-Scale Data to Study Early Care and Education (ECE) among Hispanics,” is available online at the Hispanic Center web site.

Widely Applicable Information

“These data briefs and interactive tools were designed to serve as a ‘one stop shopping’ resource by providing easy access to critical ECE data, not only to support the work of researchers, but also policymakers and other key stakeholders,” said  Michael López, Ph.D. an Abt principal associate who co-directs the Hispanic Center with Lina Guzman of Child Trends.

The four briefs in the series are: Project Overview and Methodology, Search and Decision-Making, Families’ Use of Early Care and Education, and Hispanic Parents and Children Experience ECE Settings. Hispanic Center partner UNC Greensboro led the creation of the briefs. Researchers can use the data to:
  • Select the studies, samples, and variables most appropriate for their research questions;
  • Better understand the strengths and challenges of these data; and
  • Identify potential new research questions that could be answered.
The Hispanic Center also is releasing two companion interactive tools – the development of which was led by Abt –that provide easy access to details about the datasets reviewed in the briefs and allows researchers to readily explore and compare the specific data elements present or absent in the different data sets.

The tools provide the ability to quickly and efficiently dig deeper into different national or large surveys and see which ones include questions about the ECE variables of interest, such as satisfaction with options, access barriers, difficulty of ECE search, and more. The tools cover Search and Decision-Making and Families’ Utilization of Early Care and Education.

Learn more about the Hispanic Center.
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