Another study that suggests day care has positive effects is Shea’s study of three and four year old children in the playground during their first ten weeks at nursery school. In this study, Shea video taped children, assessing their levels of sociability through analysing their aggression, rough and tumble play, frequency of peer interaction, distance from the teacher, and distance from the nearest child. Shea found that the children became more sociable over the ten weeks, especially in those who had attended five days a week of day care compared to children who had attended two days a week of day care.
One strength of day care research is its practical applications in the real world. Research findings from the studies into the effects of day care have suggested that an important factor is the quality of day care, which has resulted in government inspectors now visiting all day care institutes to ensure high standards are upheld. It An example is Bryant’s research shows that childminders need to stimulate the child’s cognitive development. Another strength is that research suggests that day care is particularly valuable for children from deprived homes. This shows that research has helped us realise the way in which we can give deprived children a ‘head start’ so they are not so disadvantaged when they start school.
However a weakness of this research into day care is it is difficult to generalise the results of research into day care because the effects depend on factors otrher than just whether the child is in day care or not. There could be many other variables connected to the success of a child at school, for esample if they were taught to read by their parents at an earlier age or not, or if their education was given more attention by their parents. Another weakness is there are a number of problems with the methodology involved in the studies of day care, such as day care studies which were carried out in different countries may be biased to their child rearing practices (referring back to the findings of the strange situation world wide, and how Japan and Germany had different child rearing practices). This would be a problem from another angle as the nationality of the researcher may also have an effect on the findings, possibly if the researcher is of a western background they may view behaviour as being abnormal, when it isn’t. Another example of this is in Sweden the government subsidises day care, so it is of a very high quality. Also parents get extended parental leave to spend with their young babies. In many of the day care studies, as in Bryant, there were no control groups of children not in day care. This would be a problem as the researcher couldn’t compare the results found in the day care children to children who hadn’t experience day care. Also, some of the studies, such as Belsky, have used the strange situation to measure social development, which is a weakness as the strange situation was created by a western researcher and will risk the possibility of its western views coming across in the findings collected, making a biased study.
These weaknesses suggest that the results of day care research may be low on reliability.
In contrast research by Bryant and Belsky suggests day care has negative, not positive, effects on development. For example Bryant found that about 25% of children were happy at the minders and at home. 37% were unnaturally quiet, passive and detached at the minders, but responsive at home. 37% were unresponsive in both environment, 25% of all the children were disturbed and had poor speech. He concluded that childminding can be successful if children are introduced slowly to their new environment, and if that environment is stimulating and affectionate.
This suggests that not all the research supports the view that day care always has positive effects on development.
