DOI: 10.3886/icpsr35519.v16
title: National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE), [United States], 2012
title: Version 16

description: The 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) is a set of four integrated, nationally representative surveys conducted in 2012. These were surveys of (1) households with children under 13, (2) home-based providers, (3) center-based providers, and (4) the center-based provider workforce.
The 2012 NSECE documents the nation's current utilization and availability of early care and education (including school-age care), in order to deepen the understanding of the extent to which families' needs and preferences coordinate well with providers' offerings and constraints. The experiences of low-income families are of special interest as they are the focus of a significant component of early care and education and school-age child care (ECE/SACC) public policy. The 2012 NSECE calls for nationally-representative samples including interviews in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
The study is funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), United States Department of Health and Human Services. The project team is led by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, in partnership with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and Child Trends.
The Quick Tabulation and Public-Use Files are currently available via this site. Restricted-Use Files are also available at three different access levels; to determine which level of file access will best meet your needs, please see the NSECE Data Files Overview for more information.
Level 1 Restricted-Use Files are available via the Child and Family Data Archive. To obtain the Level 1 files, researchers must agree to the terms and conditions of the Restricted Data Use Agreement and complete an application via ICPSR's online Data Access Request System.
Level 2 and 3 Restricted-Use Files are available via the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). For more information, please see the access instructions for NSECE Levels 2/3 Restricted-Use Data.
For additional information about this study, please see:

NSECE project page on the OPRE website
NSECE study page on NORC's website
NSECE Data Users Page
For more information, tutorials, and reports related to the National Survey of Early Care and Education, please visit the Child and Family Data Archive's Data Training Resources from the NSECE page.
description: The primary purpose of the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) was to provide a comprehensive snapshot of both the availability and utilization of early care and education in the United States. The main objectives of the study included:

Providing the first national portrait of the availability of early care and education for the full spectrum of care providers, including households and providers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Identifying early care and education and school-age child care (ECE/SACC) needs and preferences among households in the United States with children under age 13 as they pertain to supporting both the employment of parents and the development of children.
Capturing data on all forms of non-parental care for all children in a household.
Providing the perspectives of both families and providers on the services offered in a system where children are often in multiple arrangements and providers receive funding from multiple sources.
Linking the data set collected with policy-relevant data.
Increasing the understanding of the care received by low-income children and how that varies across communities.
description: The 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) is a coordinated set of four nationally representative surveys pertaining to the supply of and demand for early care and education in the United States, including the individuals working directly with children. There are two primary sources of sample for these four surveys, a household sample and a provider sample. A household sample was constructed using an address-based sample of housing units. In order to draw a nationally representative sample of the supply of early care and education, the project constructed a list of providers from several administrative lists.
Using a household screener, eligible households were identified for the household questionnaire and for the home-based provider questionnaire from the household sample. Three different surveys used the provider sample. Center-based providers of early care and education to children not yet in kindergarten were selected through a center-based screener for the center-based provider questionnaire. From the center-based providers who completed a center-based provider interview, respondents were selected for the workforce questionnaire. Also from the administrative lists, home-based providers were selected for the home-based provider survey. Note that the home-based provider survey includes both samples: the household (for unlisted providers) and the administrative lists (for listed providers).
description: Household Survey: This survey documents the nation's demand for early care and education services. Key questionnaire topics include details on usage of non-parental care, expenditures on non-parental care, parental search behavior for early care and education, and the balance of parental employment with child care needs and availability. Data from multiple children, details of parental searches for care, and innovative approaches for determining likely participation in government programs (such as Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Head Start, or public pre-K) are all innovations in the household questionnaire instrument.
Home-Based Provider Survey: Key questionnaire topics in the home-based provider questionnaire include enrollment and the characteristics of the children served, rates charged for care, participation in government programs, household composition, qualifications for and attitudes toward early childhood education (ECE), use of curricula and activities conducted with children (varied to be appropriate for younger children and school-age children).
Center-Based Provider Survey: Topics covered by this instrument include enrollment and characteristics of children served, staffing, prices charged, schedules of service, participation in government programs, and staff compensation and professional development policies. The questionnaire also includes the selection of a representative classroom about which more detailed staffing, compensation, and curriculum information are collected. Although no observational data are collected on the care provided, the questionnaire includes a variety of measures at both the program and individual staff levels that have been found in the literature to predict observed quality of care.
Workforce Survey: Topics include information about the work setting (activities in the classroom, interactions with parents and other staff, availability of professional development and other supports), roles and responsibilities (lead teacher, teacher, assistant teacher, aide), compensation (wages and benefits), and perceived leadership and morale, as well as personal information about qualifications, attitudes toward ECE, and stress, depression, and demographic information.
description: Please refer to the accompanying User Guides and Manuals for weighting information and usage for all datasets.
description: Response Rates: 
Household Survey: A total of 65,712 screening interviews were completed, for a weighted screener completion rate of 91.1 percent. From these, 11,629 eligible households completed a Household interview, yielding a weighted interview completion rate of 67.1 percent. The overall weighted response rate is 62.2 percent.
Home-Based Provider Survey: The 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) data include a combined total of 5,986 for Listed and Unlisted Home-Based provider interviews. For Listed Home-Based providers, eligibility was confirmed for a total of 5,752 home-based providers, for a weighted screener completion rate of 86.5 percent. From these, 3,934 eligible Listed Home-Based providers completed a Home-Based provider interview, yielding a weighted interview completion rate of 93.3 percent. The overall weighted response rate is 80.7 percent. For Unlisted Home-Based providers, a total of 65,712 screening interviews were completed, for a weighted screener completion rate of 91.1 percent. From these, 2,052 eligible Unlisted Home-Based providers completed an Unlisted Home-Based provider interview, yielding a weighted interview completion rate of 66.4 percent. The overall weighted response rate for unlisted providers is 67.5 percent.
Center-Based Provider Survey: A total of 15,805 screening interviews were completed, for a weighted screener completion rate of 94.3 percent. From these, 8,265 eligible Center-Based Providers completed a Center-Based interview, yielding a weighted interview completion rate of 78.2 percent. The overall weighted response rate is 73.7 percent.
Workforce Survey: Altogether, 5,556 interviews were completed with workforce respondents. A total of 7,230 center-based provider questionnaires were completed with adequate data to sample a workforce respondent, for a weighted screener completion rate of 88.1 percent. From these, 5,556 eligible workforce employees completed a Workforce interview, yielding a weighted interview completion rate of 80.7 percent. The overall weighted response rate is 71.2 percent.
description: The 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) sample design is a multistage probability design. In the first stage, 219 primary sampling units (PSUs) were selected across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. PSUs were allocated to states by size based on the population of children under age 18 within each state. In the second stage, secondary sampling units (SSUs) were selected for the household sample. Because the experiences of low-income families are of special interest in public policy addressing early care and education/school-age child care (ECE/SACC), the 2012 NSECE sample design included a low-income oversample. SSUs were selected disproportionately from areas in which at least 40 percent of households had income below 250 percent of federal poverty guidelines. Altogether, 755 SSUs were selected, with 537 SSUs in these lower-income areas and 218 in areas with lower densities of low-income households. The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) made available to the states the opportunity to supplement their 2012 NSECE samples for the purpose of increasing state-specific sample sizes and analytic power. The states of New York and Illinois both exercised this option to supplement. The 219 PSUs and 755 SSUs in the final sample reflect an expansion of the number of PSUs by two and the number of SSUs by 14 relative to what would have been allocated in the absence of supplementation.
There are two primary sources of sample for this study. A household sample was constructed as a hybrid between an address-based sample of housing units selected from the Delivery Sequence File (DSF) maintained by the United States Postal Service and a freshly listed sample of housing units in a small number of locations where the DSF lacked adequate coverage to support a high-quality sample. In order to draw a nationally representative sample of the supply of early care and education, the project constructed a sampling frame of "listed" providers from administrative lists. This frame was built through compiling and geo-coding all available state-level and national lists of providers of early care and education collected from various agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These lists of providers included licensing, regulation, and license-exempt lists, as well as lists of providers in specific programs such as offering Head Start or public pre-kindergarten.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Workforce Quick Tabulation File
DS2: Center-based Provider Quick Tabulation File
DS3: Home-based Unlisted Provider Quick Tabulation File
DS4: Home-based Listed Provider Quick Tabulation File
DS5: Household Child-level Quick Tabulation File
DS6: Household Quick Tabulation File
DS7: Workforce Public-Use Data File
DS8: Center-based Public-Use Data File
DS9: Home-based Public-Use Data File
DS10: Household Calendar Public-Use Data File
DS11: Household Public-Use Data File
DS12: Workforce Restricted-Use Data File
DS13: Center-based Restricted-Use Data File
DS14: Home-based Restricted-Use Data File
DS15: Household Restricted-Use Data File
description: Households and early care and education providers in the United States. Smallest Geographic Unit: Country
description: face-to-face interview; paper and pencil interview (PAPI); self-enumerated questionnaire; telephone interview; web-based surveyWe encourage users to access the 2012 NSECE manuals, user's guides, and survey instruments provided by NORC. Note that manuals accompany the quick tabulation files and include a variable-level codebook with frequency tables. The main public-use and restricted-use data files have an associated user's guide that includes the full survey questionnaire along with other important information for data users.Due to processing and size limitations, an ICPSR codebook for the Household Calendar Public-Use Data File that shows designated missing values could not be produced. Please refer to the corresponding user's guide for information on how to use the calendar data.