The Development of Social Competence in
Latino Early Head Start Children Longitudinal Study (EHS)
Timeline
1996-2009
Project Goals
Project Goals
- The primary objective of this study is to examine mediating pathways that are expected to elucidate when and under what conditions the EHS program enhances children’s social competence.
- A second objective is to examine the efficacy of EHS for a particular sample of low-income families, specifically, Latino families who are predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Project
Staff
Nora Obregon
Jennifer Vu
Project Support
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services/Administration for Children and Families
Nora Obregon
Jennifer Vu
Project Support
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services/Administration for Children and Families
Project Summary
This is a longitudinal study of families and children participating in a national evaluation of Early Head Start (EHS), following focus children from birth through their fifth grade year in elementary school. Study participants are low-income Latino families, primarily immigrant, primarily monolingual Spanish-speaking, living in an urban community characterized by high levels of violence and wide disparities in wealth.
From our theoretical point of view, children's social development can best be understood as embedded within relationships with significant adults and peers, which are in themselves embedded within larger contexts of social setting, culture, and societal organizations.
We are currently in the Fifth-Grade Follow-Up phase of the study, which includes assessments and interviews with the children, interviews with primary caregivers (usually the child’s mother), observations of the home environment, videotaped observations of caregiver-child interactions, and questionnaires to be completed by children’s fifth-grade teachers.
