Assessment

Tutu and Me Traveling Preschool Longitudinal Study

Current Update, May 2011:

Tutu and Me Traveling Preschool is currently in Time 4 of our Longitudinal Study, testing keiki around the State of Hawaii.


Overview of the Study:

                            Tutu and Me Longitudinal Study
Synopsis

2008

In the fall of 2008, Tutu and Me will begin a three-year longitudinal study to evaluate its effects on children’s school readiness. The study, which is funded by the federal Department of Education and the Hawai’i Department of Human Services,    proposes to answer four questions:

·         What are the characteristics of the children and families who participate in Tutu and Me?
·         What is the quality of care provided by the parents and caregivers in Tutu and Me?
·         To what extent does participation in Tutu and Me affect children’s development as they move from Tutu and Me to early elementary years?
·         To what extent does participation in Tutu and Me help parents and caregivers contribute to children’s development and school functioning?

The sample will consist of 200 randomly selected children between the ages of 2 and 3 from 12 sites: 4 on Oahu; 4 on Hawai’i; 2 on Kaua’i; and 1 each on Moloka’i and Maui. The three-year-old children will be followed through the spring of kindergarten; the younger children through the spring of pre-kindergarten. 

Data will be gathered with a multi-source multi-method approach at four intervals: Time 1 (October, 2008); Time 2 (May, 2009); Time 3 (May, 2010); and Time 4 (May, 2011). Assessments will be conducted of individual children’s receptive language ability, letter-word recognition, and math skills. In addition, parent and teacher reports will be used to assess children’s behavior and social competence. Student records will be used to obtain data about attendance, grade retention, referrals to special education, and disciplinary problems Assessments of child care quality will be collected through observations of individual caregivers in Tutu and Me as well as through observations of preschool and school classrooms. Data on parent, family and child characteristics will be collected through surveys or interviews with parents.

Child assessment measures will include: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, 3rd Edition (PPVT-III: Dunn & Dunn, 1997) for receptive language ability; subsets of the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement Revised, 3rd Edition (WJ-R: Woodcock,McGrew, & Mather, 2001) for math or the Hawaii Student Assessment; the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT: Markwardt, 1998), for mathematics, reading recognition, reading comprehension, spelling, and general information; and the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (LeBuffe, 1999) for children’s social competence. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: Achenbach, T, 1991) will be used to assess behavioral problems and social competencies of children as reported by parents and teachers. To assess quality, the study will use the CCAT-R for individual caregivers as well as the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale (ECERS: Harms and Clifford, 1980) and a modified version, the Instructional Environmental Observation Scale (IEOS: Secada, 1997).for kindergarten.

Because Tutu and Me aims to serve Native Hawaiian families and caregivers, cultural competence will play a major role in the study. The research will take into account the home language of the study participants, and if it is Hawaiian, Hawaiian speakers will be used as interviewers and observers. In addition, accepted practices will be used to determine where interviews should take place—whether at Tutu and Me and at school or in the home. Equally important, with the exception of the Hawaii Student Assessments, all measures will have to be reviewed for cultural appropriateness. Once there is agreement on the measures to be used, observers will be trained to the accepted standard of reliability. Regularly scheduled re-training will occur to counteract drift. If possible, the researchers will track the same group of families and children throughout the study.

Data analysis will focus on testing the long-term associations between child care experiences during the first year of the study, when most children will participate in Tutu and Me, and children’s later academic and social development. Correlations between child care variables and child outcome trajectories will be computed, with child care predictor values and covariates centered on the mean to enhance the interpretation of effects. The effect size will also be computed to show the significance of the association with child outcome trajectories.

The research will be guided by an Advisory Committee that will meet on a regular basis. Committee members may include representatives of the state Department of Education, the Kamehameha Schools, the University of Hawaii Center on the Family, the Hawaii Association for the Education of Young Children, and the Good Beginnings Alliance. The Committee will review the design and instruments for the study; preliminary findings, and the final report.

Project staff will include Toni Porter from the Institute for a Child Care Continuum as the Principal Investigator, and Lee Vuong, the Institute’s Research Associate. Other staff will include a Program Coordinator at Tutu and Me, who will be responsible for managing the data collection effort, as well as a Program Assistant, who will be responsible for maintaining contact with the families, the schools, and data entry. In addition to these staff, the study will recruit and train 20 observers. The project will also include a consultant with expertise in social statistics to help with the project design and analysis.


For more information, please contact:
Gail Omoto
ph:  (808) 237-6641