DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04091
title: Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), United States, 1972-1992
title: Archival Version

description: The Carolina Abecedarian (ABC) Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE) projects consist of two consecutive longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of early childhood educational intervention for children at high risk for developmental delays and school failure. Combined, the two studies test the hypothesis that child care, home visit, and home school resource interventions can enhance cognitive and academic outcomes for children at risk for school failure due to factors such as poverty, low maternal IQ, or low parental education. These studies provide the only experimental data regarding the efficacy of child care interventions that began during early infancy and lasted until the child entered kindergarten. In addition, the data allow for tests of the efficacy of intervention during the primary grades.
Research hypotheses include:

Within this high-risk sample, early cumulative risk will be negatively associated with young adult educational outcomes, employment outcomes, avoidance of teen parenthood, and avoidance of criminal behavior.
Early intervention will moderate the effects of risk such that the effects of increased risk would be weaker for those who received the intervention than for those who did not.
The early home environment would mediate any found effects for early risk and that early educational intervention would moderate the effects of the early home environment such that the effects of a poor-quality home environment would be weaker for those who received treatment compared to those who did not.
Demographic variables included in this collection: gender, age, level of education.
description: The Carolina Abecedarian (ABC) Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE) projects consist of two consecutive longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of early childhood educational intervention for children at high risk for developmental delays and school failure. Combined, the two studies test the hypothesis that child care, home visit, and home school resource interventions can enhance cognitive and academic outcomes for children at risk for school failure due to factors such as poverty, low maternal IQ, or low parental education. These studies provide the only experimental data regarding the efficacy of child care interventions that began during early infancy and lasted until the child entered kindergarten. In addition, the data allow for tests of the efficacy of intervention during the primary grades.
description: The Abecedarian Project is a prospective randomized trial with participants from low-income families either participating in the planned "treatment" groups or serving as untreated controls. Essentially, three educational treatments were provided: educational child care from six weeks to school entry, home visit from six weeks to school entry, and home school resource services during the child's first three years of school. They varied in terms of intensity and orientation. The child care treatment was essentially child-centered and offered the most intensive exposure to education. It involved the child receiving child care at the child development center from infancy until entry to kindergarten. The home visit and home school treatments were less intensive and were family-oriented, emphasizing the role of the parent as a change agent in the child's development. All have been followed from birth to young adulthood. The study recruited children born between 1972 and 1977. At entry to school, half of the children within each of the two randomized preschool groups were randomly assigned to receive a home school resource teacher program during the first three years of elementary school.
Children recruited for Project CARE (Carolina Approach to Responsive Education), however, were born between 1978 and 1980 and randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: child care plus home visits, home visits only, or control. All Project CARE children assigned to either the child care plus home visit or home visit only groups also received the home school resource teacher treatment during the first three years of elementary school.
Participants were tested based on four different measurement scales: Maternal measures, quality of the family environment, cognitive assessment, and academic achievement. The cognitive assessments included:

The Bayley Scales of Infant Development at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 18 months,
The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale at 24, 36, and 48 months,
The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities at 30, 42, and 54 months,
The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence at 60 months, and
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) at 6.5, 8, 12, and 15 years.
Some of the tests were administered in only one study for a particular age. Included was the Mental Development Index (MDI) at 3 and 9 months and WISC-R at 15 years (Abecedarian only). Some achievement tests such as the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) were administered in the fall and spring of the first two years of public school (kindergarten and first grade if the child was at grade level both years) for the Abecedarian Project. The Woodcock-Johnson was administered in the fall and spring of the Abecedarian child's third year of school, in the summer following their seventh and tenth years of school, in the fall and spring of the Project Care child's first three years of school, and in the summer following their seventh year of school.
description: Variables in the collection are related to the measurements and assessments taken by participants. The maternal measure includes variables such as marital status, maternal and paternal age, education, and family socioeconomic status. Some variables were extracted from school records for respondents. The majority of variables relate to respondent scores on various individually-administered cognitive and academic achievement assessments (see Study Design).
description: Response Rates: Year 3 response rate: 85%
Year 7 response rate: 92%
Year 10 response rate: 94%
description: Presence of Common Scales: Scales utilized in this collection include:

The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI)
Inventory of the Home Stimulation
Bayley Scales of Infant Development
McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R)
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT)
Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-educational Battery
description: In the Abecedarian study, 109 of 122 participants agreed to their random assignment and enrolled a child. In one family with twins, one sibling was admitted, giving 111 children in the base sample. In the CARE sample, 64 of 65 eligible families agreed to their random assignments. The sample included two sets of twins giving a base sample of 66 children born to 64 families. The combined original base sample thus consisted of 177 children born to 173 families. Subsequently, one Project CARE child died and was replaced with no data added to the database. The archived data file thus contains 176 subjects, 111 from ABC and 65 from CARE.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), United States, 1972-1992
description: Children at risk for school failure due to factors such as having a teenage mother, parents with less than a high school education, and families with very low incomes who lived in or around a small city in the Southeast United States. Smallest Geographic Unit: None
description: record abstracts; coded on-site observation; on-site questionnaireThe title was changed from "Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), 1972-1992" to "Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), United States, United States, 1972-1992" in order to conform to current ICPSR standards.This collection is related to the Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC) and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), Age 21 Follow Up Study, 1993 - 2003, ICPSR 32262. These data can be merged with the second phase Abecedarian and CARE data files using the variable 'SUBJECT'. For similar study information and characteristics, please refer to both studies.The ABC/CARE data files in this collection contain value labels for non-integer variables. Due to Stata limitations, these variables do not contain value labels within the Stata files. Stata users can refer to the codebook provided in the download for value label information.For additional information on the Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE), United States, 1972-1992, please visit the Abecedarian Project website.The P.I. Codebook included in the documentation for this collection was previously available in XML format. It was converted to Portable Document Format (PDF) in 2004, with minimal editing to enhance presentation. Users should be aware that Study Description information in this file may not reflect the most updated version.