DOI: 10.3886/icpsr22580.v7
title: Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES): 2003 Cohort [United States]
title: Version 7

description: The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) is an ongoing national longitudinal study of the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of Head Start children. It examines the characteristics, well-being, and accomplishments of families, the observed quality of Head Start classrooms, and the characteristics and opinions of Head Start teachers and other program staff. FACES was designed to address four central questions related to program performance objectives: Does Head Start enhance children's development and school readiness? Does Head Start strengthen families as the primary nurturers of their children? Does head Start provide children with high quality educational, health, and nutritional services? How is classroom quality related to child outcomes? The FACES 2003 Cohort involved a nationally representative sample of children and families in Head Start programs in the United States who were studied at entry into the program in the fall of 2003, assessed at the completion of their program experience, and followed up at the end of their kindergarten year. The FACES 2003 battery has five main components: the child assessment, parent interview, teacher and staff interviews, classroom observations and teacher-child reports. The child assessments included the major components of school readiness, and were collected through direct child assessments and rating scales completed by parents and teachers. Some of the direct child assessments included the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Third Edition-Revised (PPVT-III), Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised, McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, story and print concepts, social awareness, color names and one-to-one counting and assessor ratings. The parent interview was designed to provide Head Start with a comprehensive understanding of the families that they serve, including the characteristics of households and household members, levels and types of participation in the program and in other community services, involvement with their children, and an understanding of their children's development. In addition to this, parents were asked to rate each child on a set of behaviors that assessed the child's basic social skills and behavior problems. The teacher and staff interview was designed to provide information on Head Start personnel experience, education, and training as well as knowledge and beliefs about child development, and educational activities with children and parents. The classroom observations were designed to measure peer interactions, friendships of children, and the extent to which Head Start programs employed skilled teachers and provided developmentally appropriate environments and curricula for their children. Some of the assessments used included the Assessment Profile, Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R), classroom observation of teacher-directed activities, and the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale. The teacher-child report was designed to capture important sources of information about children's learning and behavior through the use of the Teacher-Child Report (TCR), social skills ratings, the Behavior Problems scale and the Preschool Learning Behavior Scale (PLBS).
description: The FACES 2003 data include both full sample weights and replicate weights. There are cross-sectional weights for the fall 2003 child-level and class-level data files and cross-sectional weights for the spring 2004 child-level data files. Additionally, there are longitudinal weights for the fall 2003 through spring 2004 child-level data and for the fall 2003 through spring 2005/spring 2006 child-level data. There are cross-sectional child-level weights for the spring 2005/spring 2006 data and a single set of jackknife factors for use with all of the weights. Consult the Data User's Guide for a more in-depth explanation of the weights, the weighting procedure, and the specific formulas used for each of the weights.
description: A representative sample of 2,400 children who were 3 and 4 years old and their parents in a stratified national probability sample of 63 Head Start programs.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Fall 2003 Head Start English and Spanish Child Assessment Data DS2: Fall 2003 Head Start Center Director Interview Data DS3: Fall 2003 Head Start Education Coordinator Interview Data DS4: Fall 2003 Head Start Classroom Observation Data DS5: Fall 2003 Head Start Parent Interview Data DS6: Fall 2003 Head Start Teacher's Child Report Data DS7: Fall 2003 Head Start Teacher Interview Data DS8: Spring 2004 Head Start English and Spanish Child Assessment Data DS9: Spring 2004 Head Start Classroom Observation Data DS10: Spring 2004 Head Start Parent Interview Data DS11: Spring 2004 Head Start Teacher's Child Report Data DS12: Spring 2004 Head Start Teacher Interview Data DS13: Spring 2005 Head Start English and Spanish Child Assessment Data DS14: Spring 2005 Head Start Parent Interview Data DS15: Spring 2005 Head Start Teacher's Child Report Data DS16: Spring 2005 Head Start Teacher Interview Data DS17: Spring 2005 Spring 2006 Kindergarten English and Spanish Child Assessment Data DS18: Spring 2005 Spring 2006 Kindergarten Parent Interview Data DS19: Spring 2005 Spring 2006 Kindergarten Teacher's Child Report Data DS20: Spring 2005 Spring 2006 Kindergarten Teacher Interview Data DS21: Fall 2003 through Spring 2006 Kindergarten Longitudinal Data DS22: Fall 2003 Cross Sectional Child Weights DS23: Fall 2003 Cross Sectional Classroom Weights DS24: Spring 2004 Cross Sectional Child Weights DS25: Spring 2005 Spring 2006 Cross Sectional Child Weights DS26: Fall 2003 through Spring 2004 Longitudinal Child Weights DS27: Fall 2003 through Spring 2006 Longitudinal Child Weights DS28: FACES 2003 JKN Factors
description: The programs participating in the FACES 2003 Cohort were randomly selected from 1,669 Head Start programs that were constructed from the 2002-2003 Program Information Report (PIR).
description: computer-assisted self interview (CASI); coded on-site observation; face-to-face interview; self-enumerated questionnaire <strong>Project Officer</strong> The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey would like to acknowledge Maria Woolverton's role as the ACF Project Officer. <strong>Principal Investigator</strong> Nicholas Zill, Ph.D. (Westat) was the Principal Investigator for this project. <strong>Acknowledgment</strong> Special collaborators on data collection for the FACES 2003 dataset include subcontractors Xtria and CDM Group, Inc.). <strong>Additional Resources</strong> Reports based on this data collection are available at the Administration for Children and Families Web site. To conform with ICPSR filenaming conventions, data and documentation files have been assigned new file names that differ from those assigned by the original data producer, Westat, Inc. A crosswalk document (linking old data file names to new ones) may be found within each of the PDF codebooks and the User Guide.