The MSHS Study is a nationally representative study commissioned by the U.S. Office of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families that will describe the characteristics and experiences of the children and families who enroll in MSHS and the practices and services of the MSHS programs that serve them. The MSHS Study draws heavily on the Design for MSHS Survey Report (2011) and is informed by the current context of key policy and programmatic issues and broader issues impacting the lives of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families.

The MSHS Study has two components: a Program/Center component and a Classroom, Family, Child component that are based on distinct samples. The first component is off-site and consists of mailed surveys that will be sent to the universe of MSHS program directors and a representative subset of center directors to provide information on program and center operations. The second component consists of onsite data collection - including classroom observations, surveys with teachers and assistant teachers, parent interviews, teacher and parent child reports, and direct child assessments - with a nationally-representative sample of centers, classrooms, families and children.

Once data are collected, the study will address a set of research questions that can be summarized into three broad categories: (1) What are the characteristics of MSHS programs, families, and children? (2) What services do MSHS programs provide, what instructional and language practices are used, and what is the quality of MSHS classrooms? and (3) What are the associations between MSHS characteristics and child/family well-being?

Inclusion Criteria:

• infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in participating Migrant and Seasonal Head Start centers/classrooms across the U.S. and their teachers and parents. Also includes center directors and program directors.

Exclusion Criteria:

-

The study population includes children birth to five years who attend Migrant Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs, along with their parents and teachers, center directors, and program directors.

The MSHS Study team will prepare restricted use datasets and documentation, to be archived with a data storage site such as the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan, so that future researchers may use the MSHS Study data to replicate findings and explore new areas of inquiry.