Abstract:

Surveys, commonly employed in the social and behavioral sciences, are practical tools that can be used to assess the needs and attitudes of a given population. If not implemented in thoughtful ways, however, surveys can be inefficient or even harmful. With surveys often informing critical policy decisions, survey administrators must make careful methodological choices in order to obtain meaningful results and make sound decisions. In this paper, we review the social scientific literature on survey administration to aid policymakers, practitioners, and other survey administrators in understanding their position, identifying their participants, and establishing a plan for their surveys. We provide an overarching framework for survey design, guided by the idea that surveys are conversations between administrators and participants, in order to help creators of surveys make better decisions and engage more effectively with the communities they serve.

Abstract:

The effectiveness of early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs for children’s development in various domains is well documented. Adding to existing meta-analyses on associations between the quality of ECEC services and children’s developmental outcomes, the present meta-analysis synthesizes the global literature on structural characteristics and indicators of process quality to test direct and moderated effects of ECEC quality on children’s outcomes across a range of domains. A systematic review of the literature published over a 10-year period, between January 2010 and June 2020 was conducted, using the databases PsychInfo, Eric, EbscoHost, and Pubmed. In addition, a call for unpublished research or research published in the grey literature was sent out through the authors’ professional network. The search yielded 8,932 articles. After removing duplicates, 4,880 unique articles were identified. To select articles for inclusion, it was determined whether studies met eligibility criteria: (1) study assessed indicators of quality in center-based ECEC programs catering to children ages 0–6 years; and (2) study assessed child outcomes. Inclusion criteria were: (1) a copy of the full article was available in English; (2) article reported effect size measure of at least one quality indicator-child outcome association; and (3) measures of ECEC quality and child outcomes were collected within the same school year. A total of 1,044 effect sizes reported from 185 articles were included. The averaged effects, pooled within each of the child outcomes suggest that higher levels of ECEC quality were significantly related to higher levels of academic outcomes (literacy, n = 99: 0.08, 95% C.I. 0.02, 0.13; math, n = 56: 0.07, 95% C.I. 0.03, 0.10), behavioral skills (n = 64: 0.12, 95% C.I. 0.07, 0.17), social competence (n = 58: 0.13, 95% C.I. 0.07, 0.19), and motor skills (n = 2: 0.09, 95% C.I. 0.04, 0.13), and lower levels of behavioral (n = 60: -0.12, 95% C.I. -0.19, -0.05) and social-emotional problems (n = 26: -0.09, 95% C.I. -0.15, -0.03). When a global assessment of child outcomes was reported, the association with ECEC quality was not significant (n = 13: 0.02, 95% C.I. -0.07, 0.11). Overall, effect sizes were small. When structural and process quality indicators were tested separately, structural characteristics alone did not significantly relate to child outcomes whereas associations between process quality indicators and most child outcomes were significant, albeit small. A comparison of the indicators, however, did not yield significant differences in effect sizes for most child outcomes. Results did not provide evidence for moderated associations. We also did not find evidence that ECEC quality-child outcome associations differed by ethnic minority or socioeconomic family background. Despite the attempt to provide a synthesis of the global literature on ECEC quality-child outcome associations, the majority of studies included samples from the U.S. In addition, studies with large samples were also predominately from the U.S. Together, the results might have been biased towards patterns prevalent in the U.S. that might not apply to other, non-U.S. ECEC contexts. The findings align with previous meta-analyses, suggesting that ECEC quality plays an important role for children’s development during the early childhood years. Implications for research and ECEC policy are discussed.

Abstract:

This case study, created by Bharathy Premachandra, our 2017 Bryan Turner Intern in Business Ethics, with Azish Filabi, Executive Director of Ethical Systems, spotlights the lessons learned from the recent scandal at Wells Fargo around false accounts, inflated sales targets and misguided directives from bank executives. Under Pressure takes a candid look at the factors contributing to the scandal that wound up costing the bank hundreds of millions in fines, a shakeup in leadership, and on-going  bad press that deeply tarnished their reputation and standing. By viewing actions through an ethical culture and leadership model, the case study examines the formal and informal systems that likely motivated the scandal, and includes perspectives on how an ethical culture could identify, or mitigate, some early warning signals.

Abstract:

Over the past decades, policy attention on early education services has increased globally, shifting the focus from access toward quality of educational services to promote lifelong learning which is crucial to reduce inequalities. Although there is a fast-growing body of research indicating that high quality of educational provisions is essential for children’s development and learning, defining quality in education and its dimensions remains a challenge in terms of the methodology in research and the formulation of policy to enhance quality. The first goal of the meta-analysis was therefore to identify key indicators of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the areas of structural and process quality and their associations, with a focus on the 3- to 6-year age group. The second goal was to examine associations between the key indicators of structural and process quality and child development and learning. In addition, by including an international pool of studies in the meta-analysis, variations in the strength of associations across and within countries were explored for both goals. The literature retrieval of relevant studies and the study selection build on recent OECD initiatives on quality in ECEC. Following a heavily structured procedure of data extraction, 44 studies were coded, thereby gathering knowledge about 3,110 ECEC staff and 16,386 children. The results of the meta-analysis confirmed variations in the strength of associations between key indicators of ECEC quality. In addition, associations between indicators of process quality and children’s learning in two important developmental domains, emerging literacy/numeracy and behavioural/social competencies, were found, but no direct overall association of structural quality indicators with children’s development and learning. Our results imply that enhancing ECEC quality is beneficial for all children, including children from disadvantaged milieus.