... A Comparative Study of Structural and Process Quality in Center-Based and Family-Based Child
Care Services Nathalie Bigras • Caroline Bouchard • Gilles Cantin • Liesette Brunson • Sylvain
Coutu • Lise Lemay • Mélissa Tremblay • Christa Japel • Annie Charron ...

... In part because the market is made up of small providers, it is difficult for parents to acquire
information about the comparative quality, cost, and availability of care, and ... National Child Care
Staffing Study. ... Structural and caregiver characteristics are conceptualized as more distal ...

... The data for these analyses were drawn from the Comparative Licens- ing Study, Profiles of State ...
pos- sible to quantify the quality of states' regu- lation of the structural dimensions of ... Additionally,
while not a focus of this study, the importance of ongoing oversight and monitoring ...

... The identification of direct and indirect predictors of child care quality and the interactions among
these predictors was undertaken through structural equation modelling analyses in an attempt
to create a predictive ... In light of this comparative literature, this study of child ...

... Finally, we obtained structural measures of quality (Phillips et al., 1994) through an interview
with the ... Total scores on four study items 362 2.4 (2.6 ... National comparative data are from
Psychological Corporation (1998, Bracken manual), national Head Start evaluation (G. Resnick ...

... a subsidized child care slot or voucher.3a Two in five expressed concerns about the quality of
their ... Similar findings emerged from a study of families on waiting lists in Minnesota.32 ... For example,
the low use of center-based care in Connecticut is due, in part, to the low supply of ...

... Moving from these quality issues and the extant literature, we began our study focusing on ... gauges
of child–caregiver interactions that allowed us to arrive at comparative claims about ... of whether
various dimensions of quality are interrelated, or whether certain structural or social ...

... be emerging from a series of unrelated studies of varying quality, many questions ... York State
Project entered care.42 Later replications of this study report lower ... consist of techniques drawn
from multiple impact therapy, crisis intervention, structural family therapy, communication ...

... center to center, even when the centers operate under the same structural conditions ... instrument
most suitable' for the dimensions we selected for examination during the analysis process. ... the
two countries and report instrument and content related results of a comparative study. ...

... (The implications of auspices for the cost and quality of child ... years of age or younger who had
not yet enrolled in school in the United States.2 About 40% were cared for by their parents, 21%
by relatives, 31% in center- based programs, 14% in family child care homes, and 4 ...

... In the largest study focused exclusively on home-based care, child–provider ratios and group
size were ... Although structural aspects of child care are easy to measure and have been shown
to indicate quality, many believe that more detailed, process-focused assessments ...

... The integrated PSID-CDS dataset provides high-quality annual measurements of family income
history and a wide range of family process measures and child assessments for a na- tional
sample of children. ... Cron- bach's for the scale in the present study is .86. ...

... OF CARE: A CASE STUDY OF A PEDIATRIC PRACTICE IN PROCESS OF REORGANIZATION* ...
These structural changes in role relationships were supported by changes in economic incentives. ...
definition of continuity was further adapted to the specific purpose of study- ing a ...

... on these aspects of the model by first reviewing the elements of structural and process ... SG Deich
(1994), "Recent US child care and family legislation in comparative perspective", Journal ... Shim,
J. McCarthy (1998), "The Florida Child Care Quality Improvement Study: 1996 report ...

... There is a gradual process of less frequent visits as services progress, and ... 7 Line staff is the most
important resource for home-based programs, and the quality of staff is a major factor in a
program's success. ... Study of Community-Based Services STROUL, GOLDMAN 67 Page 8. ...

... The NICHD network demonstrated that the association between structural indicators and child
out- comes is mediated by process quality (NICHD ECCRN, 2002a). ... A National Association for
the Education of Young Children Study, conducted by the Urban Institute. ...

... facilitate positive change are integrated from therapies with the most empirical support, such
as strategic, structural, and functional ... The MST training process is ongoing ... The first study compared
inner-city delinquents (n = 196) in Memphis, Tennessee, receiving MST to a group of ...

... In the process, generations of children suffered severe and long-lasting threats ... Community-based
Child Welfare for Aboriginal Children: Supporting Resilience through Structural Change ... children,
the sample of Aboriginal children included in the study nevertheless represents ...

... A review of the literature suggests that process and structural quality indicators of child ... Background
This study was part of a follow-up evaluation of North Carolina's Smart Start program, a statewide
early childhood initiative to improve child care quality and other services for ...

... The second national multisite study of treatment, the NIDA-funded Treatment Outcome Prospective
Study (TOPS), conducted from 1979 to 1981, incor- porated a more elaborate substudy of
treatment process that investigated the structural characteristics of the ...

... Study (Ruopp, Travers, Glantz & Coelen, 1979), which assessed quality via structural
characteristics of child ... A comparative analysis reveals the extent to which varying policies influence
children's experiences ... An understanding of the cul- tural context must guide the study of the ...

... of Social Policy 1990, Center for the Study of Social Policy 1993; National Center on Child ... The
32 offices participating in the study varied in size from 10 to 40 employees, with ... High quality
casework services require that the caseworker provides a secure base for the child (and ...

... It is influenced both by the structural components of an organization and the interactions ... sample
were higher quality prior to seeking accreditation or the self-study process of accreditation ... Although
a causal-comparative study of this nature cannot determine a defini- tive causal ...

... The study did not compare programs that completed the survey with those that did not. ... In ad- dition,
national generalizations are limited for comparative purposes, as Massa- chusetts has more
stringent licensing ... Third, structural variables are only one measure of quality. ...

... Comparative quality of private and public health services in rural Vietnam. ... a snap-short of a social
system in Vietnam, which is under the current structural adjustment and ... He is a principal
investigator on 'Young Lives' Vietnam, a four country, international cohort study of child ...

... Glaser and Strauss's (1967) constant comparative method was used to compare similarities and
differences ... do not exist for comparison, the most imme- diate implication of this study is to ... The
diversity of structural arrangements in child care will require unions to create different ...

... procedure was used ( Glaser, 1978 ), which in a grounded theory study takes 2 ... The analytic
process used to develop the exploratory grounded theory was dimensional analysis ... and organizing
these by dimensions that are derived through constant comparative analysis, using ...

... All the variables used in this study were coded directly from the interview and required ... Five
iterations of this process were conducted in order to generate a small enough number of ... to
determine if the four family patterns were related to demographic or structural characteristics ...

... Provider education and training are another structural element of the child care environment. ...
According to the CQCO Study Team (1995), correspondence between parent and expert ratings
appeared ... cite quality as their first goal in the child care selection process (Hofferth et al ...

... Despite the limitations of this cross-country study, for example, in terms of differences in ... that is
likely when different versions of an instrument are used for comparative purposes, and ... The
structural differences in the system do not appear to strongly affect how parents perceive ...

... Factors in structural quality Page 7. ... such as lead teacher wage, classroom ratio, as well as center
enrollment were strong predictors of process quality (teacher sensitivity and responsiveness). ...
In a similar study, Burchinal, Cryer, Clifford, and Howes (2002) examined the ...

... preschool classrooms, con- texts that we argue are particularly appropriate for the study of job ...
However, little research has been directed at how work process in childcare classrooms affects ...
Children enrolled in high-quality programs are more likely to complete high school and ...

... and private nonprofit programs-by addressing the following questions: 1. Do the settings differ
on structural dimensions (ie ... other types of settings (eg, for- profit,universitylabschool,employer-
spon- sored) to be included in the comparative analyses." As in the original study, 2/3 ...

... The study also shows that access to and use of good quality care is an interactional process in
which ... Thus, it can be assumed that structural quality variables do not vary considerably. ... The study
focused mainly on the funded providers (N = 83), where costs play a minor role in ...

... Social, economic, and structural ele- ments also influence this decision-making process. ... In this
study, we hypothesized that two sets of outcome variables, use of contraceptives and use of MCH
interventions, are interrelated and simultaneously determined (simultaneity). ...

... Two structural factors--circular migration patterns of Puerto Rican relatives and each woman's
indi- vidual ... are typically limited to the empirical data collected through the ethno- graphic process
(eg, interviewing ... Only three of the 31 mothers in this study said that they viewed kin ...

... Structural variables, however, can also be considered as inputs that influ- ence process variables,
or the ... their credentials and remain working in a private center, thus hampering ECE quality in
the process. ... In their update of the National Child Care Staffing Study, Whitebook et al ...

... Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosenthal,
Miriam K. An ecological approach to the study of child ... Generally, these investigations evaluated
quality of care by actually observing the structural and process characteristics of the ...

... In a comparative study of five different methods to ... The tragedy of this study is that there was no ...
and stroke, where risk- In part, the type of measure one uses to assess quality (ie adjusted models
that compare hospitals by their death rates structural, process, outcome) dictates ...

... It is clear that aspects of structural, process, and global measures of quality are interrelated and
collectively influence children's experiences and ... Results Factor Analyses of the ITERS-R The
first set of analyses run for this study included a ... Comparative Fit Index (CFI) .64 .79 .79 ...

... To study the EU vis-a-vis member states, political theorists consider the relationship ... The
comparative policy development literature increasingly pays atten- tion to globalization,'" changing
the ... integrate concern with net- works and agency with the more structural approaches. ...

... Comparative Education , 36: 55–72. ... Structural predictors of child care quality in child
care homes. ... In the remainder of the present paper, the results of a large‐scale
longitudinal study of ECEC in The Netherlands will be presented. ...

... Vinson, Baldry and Hargreaves (1996) conducted a study of two adjoining neighbourhoods in ...
parents, via media publicity, publications, workshops, seminars and conferences; (2) structural
improvements in ... the local level; and (3) personal improvements in the quality of family ...

... New York: Author. Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team. (1995). ... Fiene, R. (2002).
Thirteen Indicators of Quality Childcare: Research Update 2002. Boulder, CO: University of
Colorado: National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care. ...

... Policy trends and structural divergence in educational governance: the case of the French national
ministry and the US ... Comparative Education Review , 46(1): 66–88. ... state policy (A discussion
paper for the Policy Matters Project) Washington, DC Center for the Study of Social ...

... labor market, although the results are not a substitute for careful structural analysis ... Survey (Urban
Institute 1989) and the National Child Care Staffing Study (Child Care Employee Project ...
Differences in the structure of the wage determination process across sectors are explored ...

... Table 1 presents the comparative distribution of the background variables ... compared across the
five countries means and standard deviations of Solidarity S (structural + behavioral), Solidarity ...
individuals and families to the macro perspective of the cross-national study, one must ...

... Dulcan's Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; The American Psychiatric Publishing
Textbook of Substance Abuse Treatment; The ... of Clinical Psychopharmacology; Textbook of
Traumatic Brain Injury. Journals: The American Journal of Psychiatry; Psychiatric Services; ...

... child inter- actions as well as global measures of child-care process to assess process quality. ...
Families programs that serve infants and toddlers often fail to meet basic structural standards
of ... The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care found generally poor ...

... Early studies used family-level data to draw infer- ences about supply, access, and the distribution
of quality of nonparental care providers across local ... Aims of the Present Study Research on the
family's child-care selection process has been hampered by four limitations. ...

... surveys, the CTS deliberately recruited enough participants to assess how structural characteristics
in each ... The study relied primarily on the review of medical records to score indicators ... This issue
has been examined in studies that compared process-based quality scores using ...

... Strategic-Structural Systems Engagement (SSSE) was designed to improve this unfortunate ...
published results of randomized clinical trials assessing the comparative effectiveness of ... funded
a multisite treatment evaluation research center to study family-based treatments for ...

... facilitate or hinder good quality of care, however, an observer of the structural characteristics
must ... Technical process also includes the continuity and coordination of care provided, which
can be ... Better communication was desired by 44% of family members in another study. ...

... conceptions of childhood and developmental process, beliefs, assumptions, and goals for children
(Sigel, 1992 ... of the paper, as is the ethnocentricity of Anglo-American de nitions of quality of care. ...
Thus, for example, the recent NICHD multisite study of 1281 families found that 81 ...

... A historical and comparative analysis ... Third, and most important, this study is not one that seeks
to show cultural variation by choosing societies that ... The process of industrialization during the
first half of the twentieth century brought about structural changes in Brazilian society ...

... We also see, at about this time, notable examples of comparative mortality in the work of ... subject
to assessment, and the extent of interest in the relationship between structural attributes and ... We
find, in this group, the landmark study of general practice in rural North Carolina by ...

... that diagnostic comorbidity is the rule rather than the exception, with at least one study reporting
a ... 37, 38 Our process consisted of three major steps, outlined below. ... in identifying and gaining
expert consensus on empirically supported treatment elements; most quality of care ...

... 1979): descriptive (open-ended questions about the service providers' ways of providing services),
structural (questions to ... Harbin interpreted the findings in the light of results from the larger study. ...
Rapport (5) Rapport barrier (1) Developmental process of building rapport (2) ...

... This study investigated the association of parent and child characteris- tics, with seven child care ...
available choices met standards for safety, child–adult ratios, and other structural aspects of ... being
traded off in exchange for others when the decision-making process is simulated ...

... Preliminary results from a study examining the effects of Georgia's universal preschool program ...
be beneficial given that returns depend on the interaction of person, process, and context ... Early
childhood program design and economic returns: Comparative benefit-cost analysis of ...

... that take account of consumer preferences and provide consumers with control of the process
to the ... (2003), from the National Comparative Survey of ... about Chinese American help seeking
by reanalyzing data from the Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study. ...

... of frameworks and methodologies have been employed for multi-country comparative early
childhood ... Similarly, structural characteristics were compared by researchers such as Pascal and
Bertram ... The 221 participants included in this study from Turkey were selected randomly ...

... Whether quality is measured in terms of process or structural elements, the other striking
conclusion from research is that the ... Unfortunately, comparative data on quality are scarce. ... one
teacher for children age 3 to 6. Of the twelve countries in a recent OECD study (OECD, 2001a ...

... The estimates of structural parameters are then used to quantify the value of this information to
consumers ... 5 Devine and Marion (1979) conducted an experiment in which they published
comparative supermarket price ... The 1988 National Childcare Staffing Study (Whitebook et al ...

... We have discussed some of the economic and family–structural factors related to the choice to ...
In this study, parents who were in the process of selecting childcare were presented with ... predictors
of the types of considerations that drove the decision-making process, with single ...

... maximum likelihood (FIML) based on the data for all 1,364 children originally recruited for the
study. ... fit the data well, χ 2 = 237.52(113); χ 2 /df = 2.10; comparative fit index ... Table 4. Path
Coefficients From Structural Equation Model Relating Child-Care Experiences to 15-Year ...

... Comparative program evaluations should consider whether the ability to respond immediately,
the use of ... In a study of work with youth called " delinquents"(but more like our current ... Structural
family therapy, which has been far less tested than the social learning approach, has ...

... This process of defining specific care needs of specific groups of citizens contains striking
differences ... paid formal care: family sociologists deal with the former and welfare state analysts
study the latter. ... Care and Gendered Citizenship in a Comparative Welfare State Perspective ...

... 3. The evaluation design was of high quality methodologically: either a randomised experiment
or ... Crime Prevention, 4, 61±85 Bank, L and others (1991) `A comparative evaluation of ... Weikart,
DP (1993) Significant Benefits: the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 27 ...

... Proposed changes were pre- sented as part of a broader process by which Italy's welfare state ...
A recent study of regional models of day nurseries that looked at standards set in ... in its survey
of preschools throughout the country, used as an indicator of the quality of preschools ...

... A comple- mentary qualitative interview study found that parents valued safety
and trust in their providers more than other structural or process indicators
of quality (Mensing, French, Fuller, & Kagan, 2000). ...

... We used the constant comparative method of analyzing focus group and interview data to (a ... The
authors of the three-country study, on the other hand, based their domains on in ... In addition,
structural equation modeling can be used to determine the amount of agreement or ...

... intensive care unit (ICU) outcomes are sufficiently well developed to support comparative studies
of ... from other agencies (including AHRQ) may provide an unprecedented opportunity to study
what works ... if they are outcome measures), or both (if they are structural measures). ...

... Both the dimensional and structural suggestions are tested with data from an adolescent health ...
in tandem in consumers' minds, one involving the assessment of functional or comparative
outcomes (what ... for their efforts in the design, data collection, and execution of the study. ...

... At ground level, the system or structural level differences matter very little; instead, interest is
focused on the ... In summary, this comparative analysis also is enhanced by there appearing to
be more similarities than differences ... Descriptive Statistics for Study Variables by Country ...

... The randomization process proceeded in the following manner ... The FDCRS was selected for
the present study for several reasons: (1) past studies demonstrate theoretically-predicted ... with
other family child care studies; and (3) the FDCRS provides a measure of quality in family ...

... 2 While most of Canada's regulated child care is centre-based, about 18 percent ... countries that
have developed child care systems that deliver high quality universal programs. ... comprehensive
review of Canada's child care arrangements as part of a 20 nation comparative study. ...

... managed care programs and to identify key roles that pediatricians and other child health
providers can play in assuring quality of care as health system ... For example, a recent study found
that incremental life-span economic ... needs.'1'12 The structural diversity and rapid devel- ...

... These characteristics include structural features of care, such as small group size, low child ...
Characteristics also include process features of care, such as frequent and more positive child ...
This study investigates how low-income families evaluate child care quality by examining ...

... Exposes or studies of the quality of child welfare services, and foster care in particular, were ...
Because of the importance of her comparative summary, the full table is reprinted in Appendix
A ... Kinney, Madsen, Fleming, & Haapala, 1977, p. 671) 4 In a later study, the administrators ...

... The PI strategy involves identifying structural components, such as facility demographics and
resources, that affect a ... At that time, the Memorial Hermann Healthcare System (MHHS) employed
a formal PI process requiring the initial submission and approval of a quality idea. ...

... In this article, the investigators report the second step of this research process, the develop ... of
fit in the confirmatory factor analysis models: the chi-square (X2), the Comparative Fit Index ...
Although the two-factor model devel- oped in Study 1 had reasonably satisfactory fit statistics ...

... the evaluative evidence base for both the specialized interventions and structural organization
arenas ... disorders in children are not currently available; however one large study suggested
prevalence ... Instead, it is a dynamic process driven by the health status and developmental ...

... Although the agree ment on the proper structural characteristics of outofhome care settings is
an essential aspect of deciding on an ... Comparative evaluation of specialized foster care for
seriously disturbed youths. ... A followup study of foster children in permanent placements. ...

... Literature Review The search process for this project was carried out as part of a larger review
of the youth treatment outcome litera- ture. ... Quality and clarity of reporting was highly variable
across studies, so reliabilities on some variables were less than optimal. ... Study Target ...

... Unlike the emotional and physical care which mothers expect from quality child care arrangements,
there is ... based concerns, are clearly defined by childcare experts in the childcare choice-making
process. It is evident in this study that mothers learned about the significance of ...

... if they want to.” This assumption not only ignores the many structural obstacles preventing ... In the
process of going to the community college, the temporary services agencies, and ... This scale,
adapted from the Andrews and Withey (1976) study, displayed high internal consistency ...

... Quality of care traditionally is assessed under the headings of process, structure, and health
outcomes ... also was affirmed by Ross, Steward, and Sinacore 17 in a comparative analysis of ... The
survey questions that form the basis of satisfaction in the current study were shaped by ...

... in Minneapolis, MN is building a child care incubator in a mall-type center with a ... In order to
participate in the economic development planning process and devise strategies to improve the ...
in the sector results in underinvestment of resources to promote a high- quality system of ...

... But without an array of good solutions to preschool child care (eg, quality, affordabil- ity ... couples
was obtained either through other professionals who identified couples fitting the study's
parameters or ... The focal points of this article are based on an analysis of responses to one ...

... McCartney's (1984) study of child care in Bermuda found that overall quality of care was predictive
of early language development. ... The connection between quality of center-based care and
language development during the first 3 years of life has been supported by more ...

... among family members across different domains can be modelled within structural equation
modelling ... From a constant comparative method of qualitative analysis (ie code categories are
constantly ... Although this study only inquired about the importance of the indicators for the ...

... inadequate (6, 7). Some efforts have focused on important structural changes, including ... the
previous modules provide participants with insights that facilitate the process of cross ... economic,
demographic, and social characteristics: the National Longitudinal Mortality Study Am J ...

... question. No attempts were made to generate an overall index combining structural,
process and satisfaction measures. ... index. For this study, it was more important to pinpoint
patterns of, and specific deficiencies in, quality of care. Findings ...

... employed a loose synthesis of ecological practice based on systemic and structural models of ...
In our study, practitioners did not articulate the theories on which their services were ... Comparative
outcomes of emotionally disturbed children and adolescents in a systems of services ...

... in this study were more varied than the above studies, including measures of the interaction
between parent and child as well as structural measures ... The study of children m family child care
and relative care ... Recent US child care and family legislation in comparative perspective ...

... most common forms of care in each coun- try, presented in simplified form for comparative
purposes ... Examples of such structural features are the set hours of attendance insisted upon by
some services ... The everyday demands of life—such as the need to go to work, to study, or to ...

... The proposed model was assessed using latent variable structural equation modeling (SEM ... all
available data, thereby allowing for the ability to maximize the sample size for the study. ... Therefore,
the comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1989, 1990) and the root mean square error ...

... Fam. Process 3, 186, 1964. ... Andersen R. and Kasper JD The structural influence of family size
on children's use of physician services. ... Kosa J., Albert JJ and Haggerty RJ On the reliabi- lity
of family health information, a comparative study of mothers' reports on illness and related ...