Content area
Abstract
Child care researchers divide child care quality into separate categories: structural and dynamic. A consensus has emerged in the child care literature that structural child care quality has no direct effect on children's developmental outcomes. Rather, structural child care quality facilitates dynamic child care quality, which then has a direct effect on child outcomes. However, this assertion has never been empirically tested.
The present study tested the relative impact of structural and dynamic child care quality on child outcomes using multiple regression analysis. A data set from the European Child Care and Education Study involving 1,246 subjects was used. Structural quality variables continued to be correlated with child outcomes after the variance associated with dynamic quality variables was removed. The prevailing view that structural child care quality has no influence beyond facilitating dynamic child care quality was not supported by the present study.