Li et al (2013)

Question 1

What was the general aim?

Answer 1

To investigate the effects of high and low quality day care in two age groups: infant toddler and pre school

Question 2

What did Li et al look at?

Answer 2

How cognitive, language and pre academic skills were impacted and the different combinations of high and low quality daycare at different ages

Question 3

What was hypothesis 1?

Answer 3

> HQ early care would improve cognition

>But, HQ early care would be irrelevent without HQ late care, people with low-low would be the same

Question 4

What was hypothesis 2?

Answer 4

> HQ late care would improve cog, lang and pre academics

>High-High care would lead to better cog, lang and PA than Low-High

Question 5

What was hypothesis 3?

Answer 5

High-High would be associated with higher outcomes than all other combinations

Question 6

How many participants were used?

Answer 6

1364 families with newborn babies born in 1991 from different states

Question 7

How did they make the study more generalisable?

Answer 7

They used a variety of ethnicities, races and socioeconomic status’

Question 8

Who did they exclude from the study?

Answer 8

Teenage mothers, children with disabilities, families leaving the area and mothers without good english

Question 9

How was the study designed?

Answer 9

As a longitudinal study that used observations and interviews, questionnaires and child assessments from NICHD SECCYD

Question 10

Was the data primary or secondary?

Answer 10

Secondary

Question 11

What did they measure in children at 24 months?

Answer 11

IQ

Question 12

What tests did they use with 54 months?

Answer 12

Woodstock Johson Memory - STM
Tests for language
Woodstock Johnson Letter Word Identification
Woodstock Johnson Applied Problems - Maths

Question 13

Which part of hypothesis 1 was found to be true?

Answer 13

That early care would improve cognition as there was a significant difference of 0.28 at the p<0.001 level

Question 14

Which part of hypothesis 1 wasn’t entirely proved?

Answer 14

That High-Low would be the same as Low-Low, supported by lang and read but refuted by maths (p<0.1) 0.17 and memory (p<0.05) 0.20

Question 15

What significant differences were found for hypothesis 2 (late high better than late low)?

Answer 15

lang - 0.19
read - 0.28
maths - 0.22 (p<0.001)

Question 16

What was found for children receiving high quality early care and late care compared to those with low quality early care and high quality late care?

Answer 16

No difference for language and memory.
But High-Highs scored better than Low-Highs for
Reading (p<0.05) 0.20
Maths (p<0.1) 0.17

Question 17

What did they find for hypothesis 3 (high-high vs low-low)

Answer 17

Significant on all measures:
mem p<0.1 - 0.16
lang p<0.001 - 0.35
read p<0.05 - 0.17
maths p<0.001 - 0.28

Question 18

What did they find for hypothesis 3 (high-high vs high-low)

Answer 18

True except for memory so memory formed earlier
lang p<0.01 - 0.21
read p<0.1 - 0.17
maths p<0.1 - 0.15

Question 19

What did they find for hypothesis 3 (high-high vs low-high)?

Answer 19

No difference for language and memory.
But High-Highs scored better than Low-Highs for
Reading (p<0.05) 0.20
Maths (p<0.1) 0.17

Question 20

What were the general findings?

Answer 20

> HQ early care helps memory
HQ early care is best with HQ late care
HQ late is better than HQ early if can only choose 1

Question 21

What is a strength of the sample?

Answer 21

Generalisable, large sample, different US states

Question 22

What is a strength of the data used?

Answer 22

Secondary data, easier to gather more of it, lots of methods for gathering it - interviews, observations, questionaires, tests

Question 23

What is the application?

Answer 23

Helps parents who can only afford one daycare

Question 24

What is a disadvantage of the study?

Answer 24

The way the quality of daycare was categorised was oversimplified and didn’t include a variety of factors such as social skills

Question 25

What is a disadvantage of the sample?

Answer 25

It was biased towards the economically advantages and didn’t use teenage mothers