Early Childhood Insights (RAPID EC – Survey)

Project Description

The Rapid Assessment of Pandemic Impact on Development – Early Childhood (RAPID – EC), administered by Stanford University, is utilized to collect information on the following of families with children under 5:

  • Families’ needs in relation to child care and healthcare
  • Families’ needs in relation to impacts of COVID-19
  • Mental health and wellbeing of parents and children
  • Material hardships for families before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

The University of Houston Institute for Research on Gender, Women and Sexuality (UH-IRGWS) was selected to administer the RAPID EC-Survey. Over two years, UH-IRGWS, in collaboration with Harris County and Stanford University, will conduct the RAPID EC-Survey across Harris County, gather data and report on research findings. Program results will be used to help direct the County’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) investments and inform regional strategy.

The Home-Based Child care Providers in Harris County Report was funded by a planning grant from Home Grown, an organization focused on supporting home-based child care providers and produced by Connective. It included direct outreach to home-based child care providers, including Vietnamese, Spanish, and English-speaking providers, to learn what supports are needed by these providers.

PRIMARY PARTNERSHIPS

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Because of the nature of this survey, UH will conduct the RAPID survey recruitment rollout in four phases:

  • Phase 1: A pilot seeking ~300 valid responses over April 24-May 8, 2023
    • Depending on response rate, we may go somewhat higher, but RAPID will keep an eye on count and do validity checks regularly, so that we can close the survey down if/once roughly 300-400 valid responses are collected.
  • Phase 2: The full rollout, seeking the number remaining acer the pilot to get to a total of 1000+, in June-July 2023
    • Will reach out to fill any demographic gaps indicated in the pilot.
  • Phase 3: Aim to do a facilitated multilingual rollout for an additional group of refugee and immigrant respondents, as well as any further groups not adequately represented to that point
    • Languages: Arabic, Swahili, Pashto~ (or Dari/Farsi)
  • Phase 4: Once people complete the recruitment survey, they are then in the set invited to respond to follow-up surveys quarterly.
    • Depending on the fall-off rate (RAPID has a 60% retention rate, nationally), we will do additional recruitment across the 2-year period to fill in lost spots, with demographics in mind. The total average goal after the recruitment phase 2 is 1000 respondents.

TARGET IMPACT

  • Number of families participating in the survey (at least 1,500)
  • Publicly available report of Research Findings

WEBSITE LINK

USE OF EVIDENCE & PROGRAM EVALUATIONS

RAPID-EC survey has been utilized since April 2020 to understand the experiences and challenges that caregivers of young children faced during and post COVID-19 pandemic. This information is utilized to provide timely, actionable data to advocates, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers; lending itself to be utilized by Harris County in leveraging the allocated resources in a timely efficient manner.