Hello, I am Edith Gozali-Lee, a research scientist at Wilder Research. I work primarily on research and evaluation projects related to education. I am currently working on a multi-site, longitudinal study of an early childhood initiative. The study includes three cohorts of school-based preschool program children in ten schools, five cohorts of community-based child care children in homes and centers, and comparison children with and without prior preschool experience. The study follows children from preschool to third grade. That’s a lot to track, making good data collection critical from the start.
Hot Tips:
These are a few coding tips that will help to ensure good data collection tracking:
- Anticipate the different groups ahead of time and make intuitive coding to make it easier for the following years’ data tracking and analyses
- Use categories or codes used by schools to make data analyses process easier when you merge data that you collect with other student data collected by schools (demographic data and student outcomes)
- Label all instruments (survey and assessment forms) with these codes prior to data collection to reduce coding work after the data collection and errors for data entry
Lesson Learned:
It is helpful to hold regular project debriefs to reflect on what works well and does not work so well. This will make the evaluation process go smoother and faster the next time around.
Rad Resources:
Practical research-based information, visit CYFERnet Children, Youth and Families Education and Research Network
Resources for research in early childhood:
- Childhood Programs and practices in the first decade of life: A human capital integration by Reynolds, Rolnick, Englund, and Temple presents research findings on the effects of a variety of early childhood programs and practices for young children and families.
- National Institute for Early Education Research
We are looking forward to seeing you in Minnesota at the AEA conference this October. Results of this study (along with other Wilder Research projects and studies) will be presented during a poster session: Academic Outcomes of Children Participating in Project Early Kindergarten Longitudinal Study.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating with our colleagues from Wilder Research this week. Wilder is a leading research and evaluation firm based in St. Paul, MN, a twin city for AEA’s Annual Conference, Evaluation 2012. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.