The researchers' measure of children's time in day care (see page 65, left-hand column) did not distinguish between full or part-time day care. Do you think that the effects of part-time and full time care are equivalent?
I think the effects would be different but how would you distinguish between full and part time care? Is 6 hours full or part time? Is 4 hours full or part time? What about 25 hours per week?
The measures should be more controlled. Children in part-time day care spend more time with their parents than Children in full-time day care, which might be a confound. Part-time day care is somewhat the middle of the research; they learn in a daycare but they also spent more time with their parents and maybe babysitters. They should control it more. Maybe have a third independent variable, part-time daycare.
But, NitkowksiM, how would you define "part-time"?
Different factors influence the effects of part-time and full-time care. Different families have different methods of spending time with their child. One family might consistenly be around the child and other families may be neglectful and not acknoweledge the child at all. What is considered time spent with the child and what isn't? The amount of time spent with the child should be controlled.
Operationalizing part-time and full-time needs to occur. We would have to just make a cutoff and go by it. For example, less than 20 hours per week is part time and more than that is full-time. Such examples as 21hrs/week would probably not be in the best category but we need an operational definition. There would definitely be a difference in the effects of day care depending on if you are in it 5hrs/week and 40 hours/week. I think that the examples such as 21hrs/week would be pulled by the extreme results to show more accurate differences between the two groups.
I agree with Cindy, but on what basis do we determine the operational definition? For some jobs, full time _is_ 35 hours a week, fo others it is 20 hours but at such yucky time that it seems like 35.
They could have easily picked an agreed upon operational definition of part-time vs full-time day-care. For ex 5hrs or less and more than 5 hours.
So what do you do if a child changes the time s/he spends in day-care? What does this do to your experiment?
I think the effects of full-time and part-time care are definately different. In a day-care, so many factors come into play, but I think this is a crucial one, and it should have been considered. A retrospective analysis can be done again, if the time children spent in daycare was recorded. It would be an interesting analysis to compare this factor to the others, and a crucial one to the experiment. A child can spend 4 hrs a week in a daycare, for 5 years, or spend 45 hrs. a week in day care for 5 yrs, which is a remarkable difference, when compared.
The measures of the experiment are effective if the students were all bright in every aspect of the study. Researchers may want to take into account the fact in some areas of study students may be stronger and daycare maybe have no direct correlation to improving this area.For example a student may be stronger in verbal abilities and weak in math abilities and that daycare has nothing to do with the person's understanding. Plus it may be likely that later in life the person suddenly understands the concept of math.
The measures of the experiment are effective if the students were all bright in every aspect of the study. Researchers may want to take into account the fact in some areas of study students may be stronger and daycare maybe have no direct correlation to improving this area.For example a student may be stronger in verbal abilities and weak in math abilities and that daycare has nothing to do with the person's understanding. Plus it may be likely that later in life the person suddenly understands the concept of math.
Yes, I think it's very important to indicate the amount of time a child spends in day care. A child could go one afternoon a week or 5 days, 8 hours a day, this is such a difference in overal enviroment that the correlations between the two would most likely be caused by a third varible. More indepth data is needed and levels of daycare put into the study.
By Connie on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 02:19 pm:
Possibly a better approach would have been to report number of hours care and use it in a regression analysis. But the results are complicated enough without getting into regression.
By NitkowskiM on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 02:55 pm:
By Connie on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:00 pm:
By Mark Wilson on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:07 pm:
By Cindy on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:11 pm:
By Connie on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:15 pm:
By Garciam on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:15 pm:
But of course, a child is very likely to change the amount of time s/he spends in d-care as s/he grows up.
By Garciam on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:18 pm:
By Alanna on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:22 pm:
By Kristina Polziehn on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:22 pm:
By Kristina Polziehn on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 03:23 pm:
By Heath on Thursday, March 26, 1998 - 07:18 pm: