Research in Oregon
Child Care: Work & Family by Arthur C. Emlen

Closer to home, Oregon has been quite active in child care research. One of the first wave of grants from the Child Care Bureau came to Portland State University for the Oregon Child Care Research Partnership, with Art Emlen as principal investigator. In the second wave, the torch passed to Bobbie Weber at Linn-Benton Community College, now at Oregon State University. A third grant is administered by Tom Olson, Administrator of the Child Care Division of the Oregon Employment Department. See research done by the Oregon Child Care Research Partnership .

Some of the work is based on a biennial population survey of Oregon households, and selected findings become statewide benchmarks published by the Oregon Progress Board. See Oregon Shines.

A child care data group, which has met monthly since 1990, still meets monthly at the Salem offices of the Oregon Child Care Resource and Referral Network. Also of interest is an Early Childhood Education E-Newsletter from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory here in Portland. Also worth seeing is a 2002 report published by the Oregon Commission for Child Care: Report of the Oregon Task Force on Financing Quality Child Care.

And a new website to be called Oregon Child Care Research is under construction. It will consist solely of links to other websites having research about child care in the state of Oregon.

Even closer to home: Social Work faculty and the Regional Research Institute for Human Services

Another source of information available to students and researchers is the work of our own faculty. Most of this research has dealt with how parents manage child care in conjunction with work and family. Eileen Brennan and Julie Rosenzweig, Art Emlen, along with staff and graduate students at the Regional Research Institute for Human Services (the RRI) have done a substantial amount of research related to child care issues. The Director of the RRI is Nancy Koroloff. On many projects, research colleagues at the RRI were Paul Koren and Katie Schultze, as well as Bobbie Weber and others with the Oregon Child Care Research Partnership. Karen Tvedt came to PSU after 13 years as the Washington State Child Care Administrator, entered the School's Ph.D. program, and conducted studies while a graduate research assistant at the RRI. Now Director of Policy and Research at the Child Care Bureau, she has a chapter on child care policy in Joan Shireman's new book on child welfare, Critical Issues in Child Welfare (Columbia University Press, September 2003).

Eileen Brennan was principal investigator of a research project called "Models of Inclusion in Child Care" which nationally studied center access for families having children with emotional or behavioral disorders. She and her colleague Julie Rosenzweig also conduct work/life studies. For reference to this weork, see Portland State's Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children's Mental Health.

The Regional Research Institute for Human Services (RRI) maintains a chronological archive of publications, monographs, research reports, and papers written for or in connection with all projects. See the Publications link at the Regional Research Institute for Human Services website.

Arthur Emlen's research is described on a separate page.