DOI: 10.3886/icpsr30423.v2
title: Child Care and Development Fund Administrative Data, Federal Fiscal Year 2008
title: Version 2

description: This administrative dataset provides descriptive
information about the families and children served through the federal
Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). CCDF dollars are provided to
states, territories, and tribes to provide assistance to low-income
families receiving or in transition from temporary public assistance,
to obtain quality child care so they can work, or depending on their
state's policy, to attend training or receive education. The Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 requires states and
territories to collect information on all family units receiving
assistance through the CCDF and to submit monthly case-level data to
the Office of Child Care. States are permitted to report case-level data
for the entire population, or a sample of the population, under
approved sampling guidelines.
The Summary Records file contains
monthly state-level summary information including the number of
families served. The Family Records file contains family-level data
including single parent status of the head of household, monthly
co-payment amount, date on which child care assistance began, reasons
for care (e.g., employment, training/education, protective services,
etc.), income used to determine eligibility, source of income, and the
family size on which eligibility is based. The Child Records file
contains child-level data including ethnicity, race, gender, and date
of birth. The Setting Records file contains information about the type
of child care setting, the total amount paid to the provider, and the
total number of hours of care received by the child. The Pooling
Factor file provides state-level data on the percentage of child care
funds that is provided through the CCDF, the federal Head Start region
the grantee (state) is in and is monitored by, and the state FIPS code
for the grantee.
description: To obtain representative national statistics, weighted
statistics must be generated using the number of families and children
served as the weighting factor. Where applicable, sampling weight
adjustments have been included in the files. Children from the same
state get the same weight, and results reflect the entire sample size
of the United States and its territories. There are two weight
variables available for analysis: A_FCHWT and U_FCHWT. A description
of these weights is provided below:

A_FCHWT: Annual Adjusted Weight for Families/Children Served.
This sampling weight adjustment accounts for the pooling factor, and
it weights the data by the number of families and children served by
CCDF in each state/national.
U_FCHWT: Annual Unadjusted Weight for Families/Children Served.
This sampling weight adjustment <strong>does not</strong> account for the
pooling factor, and it weights the data by the number of families and
children served from all reported funding sources in each
state/national.

Separate child and family online data files have been produced for each of the two weights described above. Users of these data are <strong>strongly encouraged</strong> to read through
the accompanying technical documentation file for further discussion
of methods by which to obtain weighted statistics and for guidance
with the use of these methods for proper analysis of these data.
description: This sample dataset consists of monthly data provided by
states that reported sample data and states that reported full
population data, as well as any territory data received. Sampling of
the data from states reporting full population data was done in
accordance with
Technical
Bulletin #5, Appendix II: Annual Sampling Plan, Example A. The month with the lowest
caseload was selected for determining the sampling rate so that at
least 200 samples were selected for each month. Additional information
on the development of this sample dataset is provided in the
accompanying technical documentation.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Summary Records
DS2: Family Records
DS3: Child Records
DS4: Setting Records
DS5: Pooling Factor
DS6: Adjusted Child Records File (Online Analysis Only)
DS7: Unadjusted Child Records File (Online Analysis Only)
DS8: Adjusted Family Records File (Online Analysis Only)
DS9: Unadjusted Family Records File (Online Analysis Only)
description: Children and families receiving assistance through the
Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), through their state,
territory, or tribe. Smallest Geographic Unit: State
description: States continually review the quality of their
data processing. As states identify systematic errors, they may revise
or replace historical data files. While this practice improves the
dataset over time, reported historical statistics may change slightly
from year to year.These data files include monthly case-level
data for states and territories only. Tribal data is collected on an
annual aggregated basis and is neither comparable nor included
here.Additional information about this data collection may be
found in a series of technical bulletins available directly through
the Web site of the
Office of Child
Care.These data files were produced by General
Dynamics Information Technology under contract with the United States
Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children
and Families, Office of Child Care.