The North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten Program (NC Pre-K) is a state-funded initiative for at-risk 4-year-olds, designed to provide a high quality, classroom-based educational program during the year prior to kindergarten entry. Children are eligible for NC Pre-K based on age, family income (at or below 75% of state median income), and other risk…

Americans are struggling through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. In recent years, a significant body of research and analysis has documented the breakdown of the middle class and the impact of the current financial crisis on family income, housing, and jobs. But few reports have examined these impacts through the lens of…

The Foundation for Child Development Child and Youth Well-Being Index Project at Duke University issues an annual comprehensive measure of how children are faring in the United States. The Child Well-Being Index (CWI) is based on a composite of 28 "Key Indicators" of wellbeing that are grouped into seven "Quality-of-Life/Well-Being Domains,"…

This report describes findings on the quality of the More at Four Program and the outcomes for children during pre-k from two program years: 2003-2004 (year 3) and 2005-2006 (year 5). Separate results for the 2005-2006 cohort are presented to provide a picture of the program in its most recent year of operation as well as results from the 2…

Home visiting programs for families with young children have been in effect for many years; however, this is the first comprehensive meta-analytic effort to quantify the usefulness of home visits as a strategy for helping families across a range of outcomes. Sixty home visiting programs contributed data to analysis within 5 child and 5 parent…

This paper presents the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning's annual report for 2009-2010. Providing quality early learning opportunities in the first five years shapes a child's learning and success for life. The window to make a difference in a child's future is small, but outcomes show that the agency is having an…

There is increasing awareness that how young people spend their time outside of school has consequences for their development. As part of this awareness, interest in organized activities--extracurricular activities, after-school programs, and youth organizations--has grown markedly. On balance, the bulk of research on organized activities has…

The Family Development Research Program (FDRP) was begun as an omnibus effort to serve low-income, low-education families by providing education, nutrition, health, safety, and human service resources for the 108 families initially recruited. Very deprived families were recruited early in the last trimester of pregnancy. All the families had an…

Attachment Q-Sort (AQS) is a tool for quantifying observations about toddler/caregiver relationships. Previous studies have applied factor analysis to the full 90 AQS item set to explore the structure underlying them. Here we explore that structure by applying multidimensional scaling (MDS) to judgements of inter-item similarity. AQS items are…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are expected to make an important contribution to the prevention of educational disadvantages stemming from social-ethnic factors. In the present study, three services are central: daycare centers, preschools, and special parent-child programs. Whether or not relations exist between the…

Suggests that recent social changes and trends make it imperative to include demographics of all kinds in research on child development. Proposes guidelines to help child development researchers procure demographic information from their study population. Provides specific questions that may help researchers devise demographic indicators, and…

Assesses Kuwait's progress in meeting the needs of autistic children, discussing the roles of governmental and nongovernmental bodies. Gives an account of the two special schools that are currently known to cater to this disorder. Concludes that little information is available to the general public, and makes recommendations to raise the profile…

Compared willingness to participate in a developmental guidance program among 209 intermediate-grade students. Found that Korean American students indicated more comfort in discussing personal problems than Caucasians, while Caucasian students indicated greater comfort in classroom participation than Korean Americans. The groups were similar in…