Information on factors associated with barriers to enrollment in high quality CCEE can help policy makers target policies that reduce disparities in access. Data on barriers to enrollment in high quality programs can be collected through qualitative methods such as parent interviews or family surveys. Child, family, and community level information can then be used to analyze the data by characteristics of interest.
How do parent-reported barriers to enrolling children in high-quality CCEE program sites (e.g., cost, location, and transportation) vary by family and community characteristics (e.g. family income, community poverty)?
Description
General Analysis Recommendation
Identify Parent Reported Barriers to QRIS Use
Data obtained from a parent interview or survey can be used to determine parents’ assessment of the barriers to enrolling their children in high quality care. The individual fields in the data element Barriers to QRIS Use (e.g. cost, convenience, quality) can be totaled to determine the most common barriers parents report.
Calculate the Percent of Families Who Identified Each Particular Barrier to QRIS Use of Interest
Sum the “Yes” values for each category to determine the most common barriers reported by parents. To obtain a percentage, divide each category by the total number of families responding, found by obtaining a unique count of the Family ID element for families who responded to the survey.
Analyze Parent Reported Barriers to QRIS Use by Family and Community Characteristics of Interest.
Barriers to QRIS Use can be stratified by child and family characteristics to determine which barriers are more commonly experienced by families with characteristics of interest (e.g., families with low incomes). A full list of data elements that could be used to describe the characteristics of children and families can be found in the Child Level and Family Level sets of data elements in this document. If surveying families currently enrolled in CCEE programs, existing Family IDs and Child IDs can be used to link survey value data to child and family characteristics that may already be available for analysis through programmatic data collection. If existing family characteristic data is not available, parent surveys can be assigned a survey ID and Family ID to facilitate the disaggregation of information on barriers to high quality care enrollment and to avoid duplication. In this case, data on child and family characteristics can be collected through the survey instrument.
Information on community characteristics (e.g., rural vs urban community) can provide further insight into which barriers to high quality care enrollment are more commonly experienced by families in predetermined geographic areas. The US Census and the American Community Survey (ACS) are examples of sources of publicly available data on community characteristics that can be analyzed at the national, state, county, census block and census tract level as well as by legislative district and American Indian reservation boundaries. If surveying families currently enrolled in CCEE programs, existing Family IDs and Child IDs can be used to link survey value data to Child Address which can be coded or categorized to identify the corresponding community or geographic area of interest. If existing address/location data is not available for families, it can be collected through the survey instrument either by asking for an address directly or asking respondents to select their community (e.g., county) from a list of choices.
Example 1. How do parent-reported barriers to enrolling children in high-quality CCEE program sites vary by county poverty rate? County level poverty rates can be obtained through the US Census or ACS. ACS Table S1701[1] provides an estimate of the count and percent of people, including those under 5 years old, living in poverty. These can be analyzed at the county level by selecting county from the geography filters. The “County” field of the Child Address data element can be linked to the Family Level data elements using the Family ID. For each county, sum the “Yes” responses to the fields in the Barriers to Using QRIS data element to find the most common barriers.
Example 2. What are the most commonly reported barriers to enrolling children in high-quality CCEE programs for families with an active-duty military parent? Using the data element Parent Military Status, select for those families with a value of “Active Duty”. Then sum the “Yes” responses to the fields in the Barriers to Using QRIS data element to find the most common barriers.