Quebec's Child Care Services: What Are the Mechanisms Influencing Children's Behaviors Across Quantity, Type, and Quality of Care Experienced?

The objective of this study was to examine how quantity, type, and quality of care interact in predicting externalizing and internalizing behaviors of 36-month-old children attending Quebec's educational child care from their first years of life. To do so, the authors examined two hypothesized models: (1) a mediation model where quantity, type, and structural quality of care influences children's behaviors through process quality and (2) a moderation model where process quality interacts with quantity, type, and structural quality of care in influencing children's behaviors. The results of this study were consistent with the moderation model. They suggest conditions under which several features of process quality are associated with a lower occurrence of externalizing and internalizing behaviors during an important period of behavioral development and before school entry.