Critical to this question is determining a date span for a time period of interest during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, March 11th, 2020, could be used as the start date, as this is when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic[1]. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declaration on May 11th, 2023[2]. One option is to use this date to mark the end of the pandemic. Other options could include using the dates when a state implemented lock downs or quarantines for infected individuals and when quarantine or mask mandates were lifted or other relevant policies were enacted in the state.
Identify CCEE Program Sites that Received COVID-19 Stabilization Grants
The data element Use of stabilization grant indicates if and how a provider used their COVID-19 stabilization grant. The option set for this data element includes fields such as “Personnel Costs”, “Rent/Mortgage/Utilities”, and “Personal protective equipment”, among others. Each option includes a dollar amount value. If a provider did not use stabilization funds for Personnel Costs, then the value for that Personnel Costs option is “0”. Using this data element, analyses can investigate what types of programs received stabilization funds as well as what expenditure categories are most common among providers in different ECCE settings.
Analyze CCEE Program Site Characteristics for Sites Receiving Stabilization or Quality Improvement Grants
There are a variety of characteristics that may be of interest when analyzing information related to receipt of quality improvement grants or COVID 19 stabilization funds. The Type of Setting, Quality Improvement Participation, and Children Receiving Subsidy are examples of data elements that may be of interest for analysis. A full list of program characteristics can be found in the Site Level set of data elements in this document.
Example 1. What are the most common uses of stabilization grants across program types? To answer this question, the Use of Stabilization Grant and Early Childhood Program Type Offered data elements can be used. The option set items for the Use of Stabilization Grant data element are the allowable expenditure categories for stabilization grants as described above. Numeric dollar amount values correspond to each option set item for this data element. A new variable can be created to identify if programs utilized stabilization funds for each of the option set items by coding the numeric dollar amount values that correspond to each option set item. To indicate that a site used stabilization grants in each allowable expenditure category, the new variable can be assigned a value of “1” where the dollar value that corresponds to each option set item is greater than $0. Each option set item can be coded as “0” where the dollar amount value is $0 to indicate a site did not spend any stabilization funds in this category. Sum the values of the newly calculated variable corresponding to each of the Use of Stabilization Grant fields. This will yield the number of programs using stabilization grants in each allowable expenditure category. The allowable expenditure categories for stabilization grants can then be ordered by the number or percent of programs that utilized funds in each category in order to determine the most common uses of stabilization grants.
The field names for the Early Childhood Program Type Offered data element can be utilized as listed in the data dictionary or can be coded for each program type. The field values include program types such as Head Start, Early Head Start, Tribal Head Start, Public Preschool, Private Preschool, and Licensed Family Child Care Home, among others. For this data element, the option set for each field name is either “Yes” or “No.” An example of the coding that could be used is assigning a “1” to “Head Start”, a “2” to “Public Preschool”, and so on for each program where the option set for each field name (Program Type) is “Yes”. Once the early childhood program type is organized or coded as desired, the most common uses of stabilization funds can then be analyzed by types of early childhood programs.
