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Daycare Effects on Preschool <br /> 5 <br /> METHOD <br /> Subjects <br /> Children determined to be "at risk" for being labeled as mentally retarded due to <br /> socio-economic factors were recruited to particiate in longitudinal studies of the <br /> effectiveness of early intervention enrichment daycare (see Ramey & Campbell, 1977; <br /> Ramey, Bryant, Sparling, & Wasik, 1985 for details regarding recruitment and <br /> treatment). The families in the sample were predominantly black (97%), the mothers <br /> tended to be a single parent(79.4%) who was young (mean age was 20.4 years) and who <br /> had less than a high school education (mean educational attainment was 10.4 years) at <br /> the time of the child's birth. About half (54%) of the children were males. The first <br /> child in this sample was recruited in 1972 and the last in 1980. The children entered the <br /> program in six "cohorts". Of the original 156 children recruited, 131 were followed until <br /> they entered kindergarten or beyond. These 31 children were lost due to refusal of <br /> assignment(5), to the fa m ily moving to another locale (11) or withdrawing from the <br /> project, (4) to organically-based moderate to severe retardation (2), and to death of the <br /> child (4). In addition, another 10 children were deleted from this analysis because they <br /> lived in nearby corn m unities where Title X X daycare was not readily available (7) or <br /> because they attended corn m unity daycares that did not meet federal standards (3). <br /> Children who met recruitement criteria were randomly assigned to an experimental <br /> group or a control group. Children in the experimental group attended a cognitively- <br /> oriented, university daycare center from infancy (beginning by 3 months of age) until <br /> they entered kindergarten. Many of the children in the control group had at least some <br /> daycare at one of 10 local co m m unity Title X X daycare centers. See Table 1 for <br /> demographic statistics describing the children who either had with varying amounts of <br /> corn m unity Title X X daycare or who had been randomly assigned to receive university <br /> daycare. <br />