Challenges of planning a birth-to-three evaluation: A universal early childhood system evaluation

In an effort to bring rigorous research into the education and social sciences field, the past decade had seen an increase in the advocacy of randomized controlled trials. The argument in favor of using randomized controlled trial is that one can evaluate the impact of an intervention in comparison...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of early childhood research : ECR 2014-06, Vol.12 (2), p.128-138
Main Authors: Leow, Christine, Hilado, Aimee, Limlingan, Maria Cristina, Howard, Eboni
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Child Care
Confidentiality
Context Effect
Control Groups
Data Collection
Early Childhood Education
Educational Research
Ethics
Evidence
Experimental Groups
Financial Support
Formative Evaluation
Privacy
Program Evaluation
Research Design
State Aid
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In an effort to bring rigorous research into the education and social sciences field, the past decade had seen an increase in the advocacy of randomized controlled trials. The argument in favor of using randomized controlled trial is that one can evaluate the impact of an intervention in comparison to a control group with confidence during a summative evaluation. However, before coming to the stage of conducting a randomized controlled trial, extensive effort in planning and conducting process evaluation is needed. This article examines the perspective of an early childhood evaluation in the United States, and particularly highlights the challenges that arise when a state’s whole system is being evaluated, where the system consists of a variety of program models and the provision of early childhood services is universal in the system. The challenges are highlighted so that future evaluators will be aware of such issues in planning their universal systemwide evaluation.
ISSN:1476-718X
1741-2927
DOI:10.1177/1476718X13515430