Parental perceptions of on-site, off-site, and nationally accredited child care : what are the differences?

With the increase in dual-career families, more and more parents are looking for high quality child care. To help improve the quality of the child care system, parents can provide valuable information, such as what they perceive to be the benefits of quality components of their child's program. In this study, comparisons of parents' perceptions of quality were made among three center types: on-site accredited, off-site accredited, and off-site nonaccredited. Parents' perceptions of the quality of their child care arrangement were analyzed by four quality subscales (staff/child interaction, curriculum, staff/parent interaction, and environment). Second, differences in parents' perceptions of their work behaviors were studied for parents who had children enrolled in an on-site or off-site program. Data were collected from 20 programs and 136 parents. An analysis of variance was used for all comparisons. The results indicated no significant differences between groups on parents' perceptions of their work behaviors. However, on-site parents had higher perception scores on morale, work productivity, amount of time spent with child during working hours, and quality of time spent with child during working hours than did offsite parents. Second, parents' perceptions of quality were significantly more positive in all four quality subscales for parents with a child enrolled in an accredited program compared to parents with a child enrolled in a non-accredited program.