Identifying profiles of listed home-based child care providers based on their beliefs and self-reported practices

This study seeks to broaden the knowledge base of the diverse home-based child care provider workforce in the United States. Home-based child care is a crucial part of the child care landscape with approximately seven million children from birth to five receiving care in home-based settings. Through secondary analysis of the National Survey of Early Care and Education data on listed home-based providers (n= 3493), latent profile analysis was used to explore how providers grouped into profiles based on key characteristics related to their caregiving beliefs and their self-reported instructional practices, professional engagement, and family supportive practices. Findings reveal providers aligned into three profiles: Educationally Focused (72.4%), Educationally Aware (15.7%), and Caregiver (11.8%). Frequency of implementing planned educational activities emerged as a particularly salient distinction among the three groups. Results suggest that although listed home-based providers appear somewhat homogeneous in their demographic characteristics, they vary in their instructional practices with children and their own professional engagement. Therefore, they may benefit from a tailored approach to quality improvement that attends to these differences. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.