Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education Project (ICHQ)

2014-2024

The goal of the Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education (ICHQ) project is to produce center-level measures of cost and implementation that can be used by a broad range of users in the child care and early education (CCEE) field to examine pathways to quality:

  • Implementation measures summarize what a center does to support quality, including the combination of structural features (for example, teacher—child ratios, group size, and staff qualifications) and adopted practices, as well as how features and practices are supported.
  • Cost measures estimate the amount and allocation of resources needed to support the CCEE services a center provides, including how staff use their time.

The ICHQ project focuses on implementation and cost measures within center-based early care and education (ECE) settings. A center refers to a specific physical location where ECE classroom-based services are provided to children birth to 5 years (not yet in kindergarten).

The project included several foundational tasks:

  • Produced a literature review and conceptual framework as foundations to guide measures development and testing
  • Consulted with experts on practice and administration in CCEE centers, implementation science, cost analysis, and quality in child care and early education to inform the key tasks of the project
  • Conducted a 3-phase multi-case study of centers to collect data for use in creating draft measures and inform revisions to data collection tools and approaches
  • Shared lessons about conducting intensive studies in center-based CCEE settings that might help future research studies
  • Developed a series of briefs to introduce the draft measures, present key findings from the multi-case study, and suggest potential uses of the measures to inform funding, decision-making, and improvement for CCEE centers
  • Conducted a field test to validate the implementation and cost measures

The project is developing several products to support use of the final ICHQ tools and measures, including:

  • A technical report that presents methodological and technical details about the field test, what the ICHQ measures are, how they perform, and potential applicability of the measures to different contexts for those who are designing a study or initiative that may need cost and implementation of quality data.
  • A user’s guide for those who want to consider using the ICHQ measures and need detailed information on the mechanics to do so.
  • A data user’s manual to provide detailed information to support use of the ICHQ field test data for secondary data analysis.

Information collections related to Phase I of the Multi-Case Study were reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under ACF’s Generic Clearance for Pre-testing of Evaluation Data Collection Activities (OMB #0970-0355). Related materials are available on at the ICHQ Information collection page on RegInfo.gov .

Information collections related to Phase II of the Multi-Case Study and the Field Test were reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under OMB #0970-0499. Related materials are available on at the ICHQ Information collection page on RegInfo.gov .

The most currently approved documents are accessible by clicking on the ICR Ref. No. with the most recent conclusion date. To access the information collections (e.g., interviews, surveys, protocols), click on View Information Collection (IC) List. Click on View Supporting Statement and Other Documents to access other supplementary documents.

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation contracted with Mathematica and consultant, Elizabeth Davis of the University of Minnesota, to launch the project.

Point(s) of contact:  Ivelisse Martinez-Beck, Tracy Carter Clopet, and Shannon Warren.

Related Resources

This White paper from the Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High-Quality Early Care and Education project presents results from an experiment of tokens of appreciation to support survey response among staff in child care and early education centers

This series of briefs introduces and describes new center-level measures of implementation and cost for use in early care and education centers.

This snapshot provides an overview of the Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education, or ICHQ, project that is producing new center-level measures of implementation and cost for use in early care and education centers.

This snapshot provides an overview of the conceptual framework that guided the development of new center-level measures of implementation and cost for use in early care and education centers.

This report describes the development of new center-level measures of implementation and cost for use in early care and education centers.

 

Collecting data from center-based early care and education (ECE) settings poses unique challenges. Center directors and teaching staff have limited ability to participate in data collection activities because of time pressures and the immediacy of issues that arise in providing care to young children. Centers also vary widely in their size, funding, staffing and organizational structures, and quality, so instruments and methods for collecting data must be flexible enough to capture variation...

This report summarizes findings of a literature review and research syntheses in three areas — implementation science, early care and education quality, and costs. The goal of this effort was to create a draft conceptual framework to guide development of measures for the implementation and costs of early care and education in center-based settings that serve children from birth to age 5...