Survey on Where Parents Look for and Find Information and How They Use Information When Selecting Child Care

Plain-language summary

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is contracting with NORC at the University of Chicago to collect nationally representative survey data to learn more about where parents look for and find information about Child Care and Early Education (CCEE); how parents assess the people, places, or things that may offer CCEE information; what types of CCEE information parents look for; and how parents use information to make CCEE selections. The study aims to gather information that may be used by Child Care Lead Agencies to inform their consumer education efforts. This study is part of the Consumer Education and Parental Choice in Early Care and Education (CEPC) project. The study will select a nationally representative sample from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak panel. The AmeriSpeak panel provides sample coverage of approximately 97 percent of the U.S. population. It currently contains 48,900 panel members age 13 and over residing in over 40,000 households. U.S. households are randomly selected with a known, non-zero probability from the NORC National Frame, and then recruited by mail, telephone, and by field interviewers face-to-face. NORC's in-person recruitment enhances representativeness for young adults, lower socio-economic households, non-internet households, and other households that are typically hard to reach for statistical surveys of the population. The survey respondents are AmeriSpeak panelists of at least 18 years of age who have indicated that they have a young child in the household (under the age of 6 years, but not in kindergarten). If a household has two or more panel members who reside in a household with a young child, one will be selected at random to complete the survey, with preference given to parents/legal guardians. Selected panelists will be asked questions to confirm eligibility for the survey, including that the household has at least one child under the age of 6 but not in kindergarten. The study is designed to include parents and legal guardians across race/ethnicity, education level, and gender from the full spectrum of geographic locations. To include families who may not have English as a preferred language, a Spanish version of the survey will be provided. The survey will include parents and legal guardians using many kinds of CCEE and those who use parental care only to see if there are differences in how information is used depending on care type. In addition, the study will include understudied subgroups, such as parents who speak a language other than English, to help inform consumer education efforts. The survey is intended to produce findings that are generalizable to the larger population of parents with children under the age of 6, but not in kindergarten.

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