The National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) is a set of four integrated, nationally representative surveys of 1) households with children under 13, 2) home-based providers, 3) center-based providers, and 4) the center-based provider workforce. Together these surveys characterize the supply of and demand for Early Care and Education (ECE) in America and permit better understanding of how well families' needs and preferences mirror 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/school-age (ECE/SA) public policy. The NSECE includes interviews in all fifty states and Washington, DC. The NSECE was first fielded in 2012. The NSECE was fielded again in 2019 as a cross-sectional follow-up to the original 2012 NSECE.
In light of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring of 2020, OPRE funded a data collection effort beginning in 2020 to learn how the pandemic may have affected ECE providers and the individuals who work directly with children in ECE settings. The NSECE project team sought to re-interview center-based providers, center-based workforce members, listed home-based providers, and unlisted and paid home-based providers, who completed surveys in the 2019 NSECE. Households participating in the 2019 NSECE were not included in the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up. Data collection for the NSECE COVID-19 Longitudinal Follow-up took place across two waves between late 2020 and early 2022.
Quick Tabulation, Public-Use Files, and Restricted-Use Files are available. For more information, tutorials, and resources related to the NSECE, please visit the Child and Family Data Archive's Data Training Resources from the NSECE page.
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