How Stake Holder Groups Define Quality in Child Care

This paper presents definitions of child care quality from focus groups conducted to develop a research design to assess the quality of Minnesota's regulated child care system. Eleven individual interviews and 38 focus groups involving 333 people were held in communities throughout Minnesota between 1-11-00 and 6-14-00. The focus groups represented the various stake holders interested in child care quality including parents, legislators, child care staff and administrators, licensed and unlicensed family child care providers, family and center based child care licensors, child care resource and referral staff, and teacher educators. Beginning first with the traditional definition of child care quality (what is good for the child) and related quality indicators, the author presents Katz's (Multiple perspectives on the quality of early childhood programs) four dimensional definition of child care quality and the associated research investigating these dimensions. The similarities and differences in various stake holder groups' definitions of child care quality are then presented and compared with Love, Schocket, & Meckstroth's review of child care research. The paper ends with a discussion how stake holders' definitions of child care quality may inform researchers and policymakers about child care quality.