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Deborah Vandell

March 2004

Generally speaking, children in higher quality child care programs perform better on measures of social, language, and cognitive development than children who attend poorer quality settings.

But there is considerable variability across the U.S. in state-regulated child care standards. A recent study by UW-Madison education professor Deborah Vandell and colleagues provides the first empirical evidence of a mediated path from child care structure to child outcomes (see Figure 1). The study provides support for policies that establish higher standards for caregiver training and child-staff ratios.

Vandell and colleagues looked at the quality of care for children at age 4½, a time when the greatest proportion of children are in care. Their study examined all types of child care, from center-based care to home care to relative care. The resulting report focuses on 813 children who were in 10 or more hours per week of observable child care at age 4½ and had been in the same setting for at least 6 months.

Maternal caregiving is strongest predictor

The study demonstrated that the quality of maternal caregiving is the strongest predictor of children's cognitive competence. It is also the strongest predictor of caregivers' ratings of children's social competence.

The study found that the quality of non maternal caregiving is also associated with children's cognitive competence and caregivers' ratings of social competence—that is, better trained caregivers were observed to have better interactions with children and lower child-to-caregiver ratios seem to lead to more positive interactions. The quality of nonmaternal caregiving was found to be negatively associated with the number of problems caregivers reported for children and positively associated with cognitive performance. In other words, the better the care, the fewer the behavior problems and the higher the cognitive performance.

The assessments of child care quality included eight qualitative ratings. Four measures assessed the caregivers' relationship with the children (for example, caregivers' level of attention or detachment; caregivers' stimulation of children's cognitive development). The remaining measures assessed the classroom setting (for example, level of activity; degree of control; emotional climate).

The study also assessed children's family backgrounds, including mother's level of education and an income-to-needs ratio.

Because there is considerable variability across the U.S. in state-regulated child care standards, Vandell says, these findings should be useful for advocates of improved regulations.

For more information, visit Vandell's project Web site www.wcer.wisc.edu/childcare/ .

Material in this article was originally published in different form as “Child Care Structure, Process, Outcome: Direct and Indirect Effects of Child Care Quality on Young Children's Development,” in Psychological Science , vol. 13, no. 3, May 2002, pp. 199–206.