Contemporary Study - Li Flashcards
What was the aim of the study?
To investigate the effects on cognitive, language and pre-accademic skills in children who received either high or low quality care at toddler and pre-school level
What was the sample used?
- 1364 families
- Ten sample sites - hospitals of childrens births
- North America
Describe the procedure to the study
- Used secondary data from NICHD study
- 1 month - children and families assessed using a variety of methods such as observations
- Quality of childcare assessed using the 44 minute ORCE at 6, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months
- End of toddler period, Bayley Mental Development index used to measure IQ level
- End of pre-school period, Woodcock-Johnson cognitive and achievement batteries and Preschool Language Scale used to measure language, problem solving, memory and intelligence
What were the results to the study?
- Early high care benefits cognitive development
- Low quality pre-school care loses all benefits of infant care except memory
- High-High produced best outcomes and Low-Low the worst
- Difference of 0.28 in cognitive ability at 24 months
- Difference of 0.2 in memory ability at 54 months
Give a conclusion to the study
Early exposure to good quality care that wasn’t maintained didn’t benefit children, but maintained high quality care resulted in great gains for children
Give 2 generalisability points for the study
- 1364 families - large sample
- Only in North America - ethnocentric
Give 2 reliability points for the study
- Standardised procedure (different assessments)
- High in inter-rater reliability
Give an application point for this study
Tells us benefits of high quality daycare
Give 4 validity points for the study
- High in internal validity
- Range of different methods used -triangulation
- Secondary data - hard to control extraneous variables
- Only looked at cognitive/academic ability - no mention of social development
Give 2 ethics points for the study
- Identities kept confidential
- Protection from harm - not Li’s fault
Give a strength and a weakness of secondary data
- High in reliability (repeatdely accessable)
- Harder to eliminate extraneous variables
How did this study eliminate extraneous variables?
Looked at ethnicity, gender etc at varying intervals
What kind of extraneous variables were not accounted for?
Individual and situational variables
What was measured at each stage of the study?
Quality of chilldcare
Give 3 benefits of High-High Care
- Better cognitive development
- Improved language ability
- Improved maths skills
