Early Head Start: Fifth-Grade Followup Study

For the past decade, Early Head Start has provided services to low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers to enhance the development and health of at-risk children, strengthen families, and build and strengthen family and community partnerships. The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project was designed to answer questions about the impact of the program on the children and families it serves. Mathematica and its partners, the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University and Educational Testing Service, are supporting the fifth-grade round of data collection for this ongoing evaluation. Approximately 1,900 children, their parents, and teachers in 17 sites across the U.S. are expected to participate.

The study includes direct assessments of children's cognitive, socioemotional, and physical development; parent interviews; teacher questionnaires; and videotaping of maternal-child interactions. The data are collected over a three-year period as the children complete their sixth year of formal schooling. Mathematica is working with its partners in selecting the measures to be used in the study, designing and selecting the follow-up sample, developing data collection protocols and training field staff, coding and analyzing the survey data, creating data files for use by the project team and by the larger research community, and preparing reports of study findings.

This study is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.

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