What's missing? A multi-method approach to gaining a fuller understanding of early care and education decision-making

In the absence of large-scale investments of public resources, families in many communities are faced with making early care and education (ECE) decisions within a set of limited options. There is a need to better understand how families make decisions in these environments, the factors that influence their decisions, the information they need and how specific program or community characteristics may play a role in their decisions. This study used a mixed methods approach, integrating administrative, survey and qualitative interview data to provide an in-depth look at family decision-making and access to ECE within one community. We found that families were using multiple types of ECE arrangements for their children. Families considered many factors and engaged in multiple activities. These factors and activities included informal networks and formal local resources, often used simultaneously to garner access to the ECE situations needed. Complicating the decision-making context is that decisions about care change over time, and across children in families with more than one child. In addition, families found accessing information to make their decisions challenging, time consuming, and that universal information was limited. These findings have implications for policy and practice as well as for how the field continues to study ECE access and decision-making. We found that all three data sources alone provided insights, each with their own benefits and limitations. However, deep understanding of a family's ECE decision-making over time and across the family was only gained through multiple data sources and with important insights gleaned through in-depth qualitative interviews. Future research can consider different combinations of methods to use to study ECE decision-making while weighing what is gained and lost when different methods are used.