Parental Perceptions of Child Care Quality in Centre-Based and Home-Based Settings: Associations with External Quality Ratings

Lehrer, Joanne; Lemay, Lise; Bigras, Nathalie

doi:10.1007/s13158-015-0147-8

“…Only in the province of Quebec are there government-funded studies evaluating ECEC in a variety of settings (Japel et al 2005). Most studies utilizing the NLSCY and SYC either categorize center-based and licensed HCC under the "regulated" category (Cleveland et al 2008;Kohen et al 2008) without differentiating between the two types of care, or make a general distinction between center-based and HCC services (Cleveland et al 2008;Haeck et al 2015;Lefebvre et al 2012;Lehrer et al 2015) without differentiating based on licensing status.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, parents' choices are constrained by cost (relative to parental income), location, availability, and scheduling (Forry et al 2014;Sandstrom and Chaudry 2012). While some research has found that parents can accurately assess the characteristics of care arrangements for their children (Gamble et al 2009;Lehrer et al 2015), other research has found that parents have incomplete or inaccurate knowledge of their child's care experience (Howe et al 2013;Mocan 2007). Other research demonstrates that parents' decision to use unlicensed HCC may not be related to quality as much as to other factors such as availability, cost and convenience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding early childhood education and care utilization in Canada: implications for demand and oversight

Varmuza

¹

,

Perlman

²

,

White

³

2019

ICEP

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This study examined early childhood education and care (ECEC) utilization in Canada, focusing on use of unlicensed home child care (HCC) from an equity perspective. Data from the 2011 cycle of the General Social Survey (GSS) were used. Across Canada, parent responses reveal that 16.6% of children between the age of 12 months and entry to school were in unlicensed HCC. Another 24% of working parents reported having no regular form of non-parental childcare. Families with higher incomes were more likely to report using center-based care. Conversely, lower-income working parents with lower levels of education were more likely to use unlicensed HCC or report using no non-parental care at all. Comparison of parent responses in Ontario, however, where government estimates for the number of licensed and unlicensed HCC spaces are available, revealed that more parents report that their children are in licensed HCC than is possible. The lack of accurate parental reporting calls into question a key assumption of current regulatory systems, which is that parents are informed consumers of ECEC services. Given that many parents misreport the type of HCC their children use, and the equity concerns raised by the overall utilization patterns we found, we argue that governments need to take a more active role in oversight and support of HCC.

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“…His results, and also those by Cryer and Burchinal (1997), confirm that when parents and external experts rate the 5 For similar studies based on Greek data, see Grammatikopoulos et al (2014) and Rentzou and Sakellariou (2013); for a study based on a Swedish sample, see Kärrby/Giota (1995). On a much smaller Canadian sample Lehrer et al (2015) find some evidence that parents can discriminate child care quality. 8 quality of easy-to-monitor aspects of care, differences in scores between parents and experts are smaller than when they rate aspects that are more difficult to monitor.…”

Section: Previous Studies and Differences In Information Asymmetriesmentioning

confidence: 67%

Information Asymmetries between Parents and Educators in German Childcare Institutions

Camehl

¹

,

Schober

²

,

Spieß

³

2017

SSRN Journal

1

0

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. choose which ECEC center they would like their children to attend. To choose high quality ECEC, parents need to be able to assess and monitor the quality of these services. As parents can visit their children's ECEC centers on a daily basis, they are assumed to be able to monitor quality and take action if they are not satisfied. Furthermore, parents are expected to act as advocates of their children, ensuring that their early care and education experiences are adequate. ECEC professionals, including the center director and pedagogic staff, provide another perspective on ECEC center quality. Their assessments are important in enabling continuous internal monitoring of quality. Yet, parental assessments of the quality of a given classroom may well diverge from evaluations by the ECEC professionals. Differences in assessments between buyers and sellers of human services -in this case early childhood education and care -can be conceptualized as information asymmetries. Such asymmetries are likely to arise because these services are ...

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“…For similar studies based on Greek data, see Grammatikopoulos et al (2014) and Rentzou and Sakellariou (2013); for a study based on a Swedish sample, see Kärrby and Giota (1995). On a much smaller Canadian sample Lehrer, Lemay, and Bigras (2015) find some evidence that parents can discriminate childcare quality. 9.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Information asymmetries between parents and educators in German childcare institutions

Camehl

¹

,

Schober

²

,

Spieß

³

2018

Education Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Economic theory predicts market failure in the market for early childhood education and care (ECEC) due to information asymmetries. We empirically investigate information asymmetries between parents and ECEC professionals in Germany, making use of a unique extension of the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). We compare quality perceptions by parents and by professionals across 734 institutions. We detect considerable information asymmetries that differ across quality measures but less so by parental socio-economic background or center characteristics. Both similarly contribute to explaining variations in the information gap. We conclude that information is not readily available to parents; an issue that should be addressed by policy-makers. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may ARTICLE HISTORY

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Parental Perceptions of Child Care Quality in Centre-Based and Home-Based Settings: Associations with External Quality Ratings

Cited by 13 publications

References 4 publications

Understanding early childhood education and care utilization in Canada: implications for demand and oversight

Understanding early childhood education and care utilization in Canada: implications for demand and oversight

Information Asymmetries between Parents and Educators in German Childcare Institutions

Information asymmetries between parents and educators in German childcare institutions

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