The Preprimary Project is a comprehensive comparative study of early childhood services in nations on four continents. This report describes the project, the instrument devised to measure the project's effectiveness, and some preliminary findings. The project is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and has interrelated phases: (1) Phase 1: a household survey exploring the use of early childhood services by families in 11 countries; (2) Phase 2: 15 countries are involved in observation and interviews to assess the quality of children's experiences in the various care/education settings identified in Phase 1; and (3) Phase 3: an age-7 follow-up study of the children observed in Phase 2, including an assessment of their developmental status and their progress since the end of their preprimary experience. The instruments used in these phases were developed through a multi-step, collaborative process. Preliminary findings include the following: (1) teachers and parents agreed in their assessments of the importance of various educational goals; (2) teachers in Belgium, China, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Slovenia, and the United States ranked as most important categories of social skills with peers, self-sufficiency skills, and language skills; (3) in most countries, at least 75 percent of early childhood teachers are certified; (4) low percentages of certified teachers are found in Hong Kong (36 percent in kindergartens, 22 percent in day care), Thailand (10 percent in child care centers), and China (37 percent in rural kindergartens). Three appendices include Phase 2 measures, categories used in the three observation systems, and national sampling information. (JW)