American parents' and Taiwanese parents' perceptions of quality standards for early childhood programs

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the perceptions of urban parents of two countries concerning standards of selected criteria of high quality standards of early childhood programs developed by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs (NAECP).Two hundred and forty nine parents ( U. S. = 129, Taiwan = 120) participated in the study. The effects of country, sex, and educational background were examined.The study was conducted by using the questionnaire survey. The instrument was constructed by the researcher based on the Accreditation Criteria and Procedures of the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs.A three-way.MANOVA on 10 dependent variables with independent factors of country, sex, and educational background was used to test Hypothesis I at the .05 level of significance. The Hypothesis I was rejected.To test Hypothesis II, a Spearman's Rho rank order correlation coefficient was computed using the mean ranks of the 10 criteria. Significance was examined at the .05 level. The Hypothesis II was accepted.These findings leading to the following conclusions:1. American and Taiwanese parents shared the similar perceptions that supported the quality standards developed by the NAECP. Most of the statistically differences that existed between American and Taiwanese parents were the differences of the degree of acceptance of the quality standards.2. The only criterion that caused parents' selections to lean toward negative responses was the staffing standards.3. Whenever there was a statistically significant difference between American and Taiwanese parents, the Taiwanese parents were always agreed more than the American parents.4. Regardless of factors of sex and educational background, both American and Taiwanese parents shared similar values in that they ranked health-and-safety and teacher-child interactions as the first or second important factors.5. Regardless of the factors of sex and educational background, both American and Taiwanese parents shared the same values in that they ranked administration and evaluations as the two least important factors when selecting an early childhood program for their children.Department of Elementary EducationThesis (D. Ed.