Relations between Preschool Children's Child-Care Experiences and Concurrent Development: The Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study.

Abstract

As part of the Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study, the quality of center-based child care was related to preschool children's concurrent cognitive and socioemotional development in analyses that adjusted for family selection factors, utilized a mul tisite sample of child-care centers of varying quality, and included children from diverse family backgrounds. The results provide further evidence that there is a positive relation between child-care quality (both observed classroom practices and teacher ratings of teacher-child closeness) and children's cognitive and socioemo tional outcomes. Moderating influences of family characteristics were observed for some outcomes, indicating stronger positive effects of child-care quality for children from more at-risk backgrounds. Further, there was no evidence that children from more advantaged families were buffered from the effects of poor-quality care.