Objectives K²ID-SOEP

The K²ID-SOEP project aims at answering four substantive research questions:

1. Is selectivity in parental choices of ECEC quality linked to socio-economic factors?
2. To what extent do information asymmetries exist between parents and ECEC providers concerning quality?
3. How does ECEC quality affect maternal employment, wellbeing and indirectly child development?
4. What are the short term effects of ECEC quality, in particular, for the socio-emotional development of disadvantaged children?

 

The project collects new data which will allow answering these questions and which will provide the basis for further research on ECEC quality in Germany. To do this, participants of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with children under school age are asked to fill in an additional questionnaire concerning their child care arrangements. The connection to the longitudinal SOEP-data allows observing children and their parents from early childhood to entry into an ECEC institution and beyond. In a second step, the director of the ECEC institutions and one main educator of the ECEC group are surveyed.  Identification of ECEC institutions is conducted via information collected from the parents. The created dataset provides information on parental choices of ECEC services for their children and includes measures of ECEC quality reported by trained staff and by parents, measures of child development and the home learning environment, detailed information on the socio-economic status, employment, income, and mental health of parents. Furthermore, sample sizes are relatively large such that it is possible to analyze differences across socio-economic groups.