The results of the Community Child Care Research Project provide new data describing the child care experiences of low income working families in 4 communities in Indiana. Because the study participants were volunteers rather than randomly selected, and because the research design was correlational rather than experimental, conclusions drawn from these fi ndings necessarily have limitations. The fi ndings cannot be confi dently generalized to other low income working families and child care providers, nor can the links between child care quality and children’s development be assumed to be causal. For example, while it is quite possible that higher quality child care does support better child development outcomes, it is also plausible that families whose children have more advanced levels of development found and used higher quality child care. Despite these limitations, the research results do represent the recent experiences of more than 300 low income working families, their children, and their child care providers. The results suggest a number of key issues that need further investigation by policy makers and researchers
