1a. Research into day care

What is day care?

• Day care refers to care for children under school age, generally at a day nursery or by a child-minder.

• It is any formal or informal arrangement to provide care for a child by a substitute, not the biological parent.

• It does not refer to full time (i.e. 24 hour day care.)

• We will focus on formal day care.

• E.g. nursery, play scheme, kresh, child minder, nannies

What is day care and how does it work in the UK?

• In the UK, many nurseries provide for a large number of children - its the ratio of staff : children that sets the limit.

• Children are divided into smaller groups according to their age.

• Day nurseries are inspected regularly - by Ofsted.

• They have to employ qualified staff - nursery manager must have at least a level 4 qualification in childcare.

What is childminding?

• This is an alternative form of child care.

• It is similar to the care that a child would get in their own home and so is preferred by some parents.

• The child may be placed with a number of other children, but not as may as in a nursery.

• There is usually only one person looking after children so their time has to be divided between them.

What are the 4 factors that research into day care has focused on?

• There has been a lot of research conducted into day care and whether it is a positive or negative experience for children to have.

Certain aspects have been covered:

• Sociability - This is the tendency to seek and enjoy the company of others and to make personal relationships. This can include how independent, shy or aggressive a child becomes.

• Socialisation process - This is the process by which an individual gains knowledge, values, social skills and sensitivity towards others.

• Emotional development - Focusing on attachments formed and ability to cope with situations.

• Intellectual ability - This refers to intellectual growth, learning and thinking processes.

What would Bowlby suggest if a child was in day care before the end of the critical period and for long hours per day?

• According to Bowlby children in day care suffer maternal deprivation, he suggested they may suffer emotional, social, intellectual difficulties that are permanent and irreversible.

What factor did Belsky and Rovine’s (1988) research investigate?

• Used the findings of two longitudinal studies in America to investigate the effects of day care on attachments formed between parents and children in the first year of life.

How was Belsky and Rovine’s (1988) research conducted?

• Using the data of children and their attachment types with their mothers and fathers, using the Strange Situation Procedure, they found a higher incidence of insecure avoidant attachment types with mother (43%) among children who attended more than 20 hours of day care a week during the first year of life compared with those attending fewer than 20 hours.

• Also found that boys whose mothers worked full time, and therefore attended day care for 35 hours per week, had more insecure attachments with their fathers.

What did Belsky and Rovine conclude about the effects of day care?

• This suggests a negative effect of day care on the emotional development of children.

What are weaknesses of Belsky and Rovine’s research?

• However Clarke-Stewart (1989) criticised the use of the Strange Situation Procedure as a measure of attachment for children who were unaccustomed to being left with other adults.

• Children who have regular experience of day care are routinely left with other adults and develop independent behaviour that may be interpreted as avoidant behaviour.

What factor did the EPPE project - Sylva (2004) investigate?

• Longitudinal study of a day care provision (home care, nurseries, preschools and playgroups) for over 3000 children in the UK.

How was the EPPE project’s research conduced?

• The researchers created developmental profiles for each child, from the age of 3 to 7 years old, based on SATs results, preschool staff, parents and school teachers.

• The researchers also recorded parental qualifications, social background, and birth weight of the child, in order to examine the interactional effects of these mediating factors.

What did the EPPE project conclude about the effects of day care?

• Found that children benefited both socially and intellectually from preschool care, especially if they started day care before 3 years old.

• High quality provision and well qualified staff led to better social and cognitive development, which continued through to KS1 (primary) showing higher maths and literacy scores.

What are strengths of the EPPE project?

• Large sample and many variables recorded increases reliability and allows researchers to control mediating factors.

• A longitudinal study follows children over time, allowing researchers to see long-term developmental effects.

What factors did the NICHD study investigate?

• The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development followed 1364 families from birth to the first grade - to examine the relationship between day care and development of American children from a range of socio economic and ethnic background and family structures.

How was the NICHD research conducted/what did they conclude about the effects of day care?

• They found that high quality day care was associated with cognitive development.

• Also found more behavioural problems in day care children compared to those cared for at home - especially in low quality care.

What factor did Andersson’s (1992) research investigate?

• Conducted a longitudinal study in Sweden to track the development of 119 children until their 8th birthday.

How was Andersson’s research conducted?

• Data collected from teacher ratings.

What did Andersson’s research conclude about the effects of day care?

• Children who attended day care before the age of 1 were rated as more socially advanced by their teachers than those who attended day care at an older age or who were cared for at home.

• Had more friends and were more outgoing - day care offered them greater opportunity to develop social skills.

• They also performed better at school at the ages of 8 and 13 years than children cared for at home or late-entry day care children.

• Positive effects of day care, both social and cognitive were related to onset and time spent in day care.

What are the strengths of Andersson’s research?

• A longitudinal study follows children over time, allowing researchers to see long-term developmental effects.

What are the weaknesses of Andersson’s research?

• Swedish day care is well funded and the children who started day care earliest were from families of higher socio-economic status and whose mother had a higher educational level.

• Moreover the maternity and paternity leave in Sweden is extended in comparison with the UK, meaning children spend a longer time with their parents before the parents are required to return to work.

• The positive effects of day care found in children attending early was mediated significantly by coming from wealthy families and also limited to this particular culture.

What is a strength of research into day care - in terms of natural experiments

• Natural experiments are the main benefit to research into day care, many of which are longitudinal.

• Because children are observed and tested in their natural day care environment.

• And we are taking advantage of the fact that children have been put into day care by their parents, the age they went in, and the amount of time they spent in there.

• The fact that they are in day care is naturally occurring.

What is another strength of research into day care? - in terms of longitudinal research

• Longitudinal research is another benefit because you can see the effect of day care on the development overtime.

Why is the economic status of the country that research was conducted a limitation?

• If you have a country that is low in socio-economic status, parents may not be able to afford to send their children to high quality day care.

• Its not the day care itself that leads to negative effects - but the quality of the day care in that low income area.

• The economic status of the country might be a confounding variable in the quality of the day care that is provided.

• Low income countries may not be able to afford to fund high quality day care so it might be the poor environment that has the negative effects rather than the day care situation itself.

• Whereas high income countries can afford to fund high quality day care or parents themselves can afford to pay for better day care settings, so you would expect to see social, emotional and cognitive development in those children.

Why is the temperament of the child and individual differences a limitation of research into day care?

• Pluess and Belsky (2010) found that children rated as having difficult temperaments were affected differently by both good-and poor-quality day care and parenting.

• Children rated as difficult in temperament benefited most from good quality day care and sensitive parenting, and suffer most negative effects in poor quality environments.

• Seems that good quality care helps them regulate their emotions with a supportive and sensitive environment, but such children can become overwhelmed by poor-quality environments, leading to academic and behavioural problems and teacher-child conflicts that extend to middle childhood.

• Might be the child temperament that affects how well they develop (in particular socially) not the day care itself.

Why are extraneous variables (such as home life) a limitation of research into day care?

• The nature of the home environment, temperament of the child, quality of the day care and other factors often interact to have differential effects on the outcomes for each child.

• Significant variables may not be recorded.

• Other extraneous variables - age, learning difficulties, personality, home life, staff turnover, high attrition rates when doing longitudinal research.

Why is the quality of care given a limitation of research into day care?

• The research that has been conducted cannot control for the quality of the day care that has been provided.

Why is correlational research a limitation of research into day care?

• A significant issue is that children are rarely randomised to a specific type of childcare environment.

• A randomised controlled trial would involve children being randomly assigned to one specific type of childcare in order to distribute mediating factors such as temperament of the child, socio economic status etc.

• We cannot randomly assign those children to different conditions to test the different effects for day care since the environment is naturally occurring.

• So we cannot see the difference between the effects different day care settings have but we can see a correlation between them.

• Day care research is correlatory and therefore any significant associations found between day care and outcomes cannot claim a causal effect.

• Because we are doing correlational research we cannot confidently establish that being in day care causes a difference in child development.

• We know there’s a relationship but it’s not a causal relationship.

• Paves the way for further research to try and establish if there is a causal relationship.