NICHD invited researchers from all around the country to apply to be a part of the big study. They chose a group of top child care researchers who would work with the NICHD staff scientists. They decided to call it the NICHD Study of Early Child Care.
In
1989 NICHD chose ten universities to be the study sites where the children
come for the study. The researchers at the ten
universities hired and trained staff people to help them.
The study sites began to invite families to join the study. They went
to hospitals a few days every month to talk with moms who had just given
birth. The study did this for almost a year and spoke with many, many moms.
Almost 9,000
of the moms said they might be interested in being part of the study.
A much smaller group was randomly
picked from the group of 9,000
moms. (Randomly means they were picked by chance. It’s like
putting everyone’s name on a piece of paper and putting all the
pieces of paper in a hat. Then if you pulled one piece of paper out of
the hat
without
looking, that name would be picked randomly.)
The randomly picked group of moms was invited to be in the study. 1,364 children and their families became part of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care.
If you are one of the kids in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, that’s how you joined the study. (The name of the study changed a little when you got older.)