Childcare Staff Commitment

The purpose of this research study was to investigate early childcare staff job satisfaction in order to see if there was a relationship between individual wages and job satisfaction, job commitment, and program quality. In Chapter II researcher reviewed various themes pertaining to early childcare staff job satisfaction. In chapter III the researcher delineated the research process that derived results and conclusions based on survey data. The chapter discussed the overall study design, data collection, and data analysis activities used to collect data to answer research questions. The chapter furthermore highlighted the limitations of this study. The research questions that were answered are listed below:

1. What is the relationship between

the individual wages for teachers and support staff and job satisfaction?
2. What is the relationship between the individual wages for teachers and support staff and program quality?
3. What is the relationship between the individual wages for teachers and support staff and staff commitment to the job?
Research Design
A descriptive research methodology was used for this study. Non-experimental fixed designs were commonly used for descriptive purposes where it could be used when the interest was in explaining or understanding a phenomenon (Leedy & Ormrod, 2013). Non-experimental fixed designs were used to measure the relationship between two or more variables. A researcher does not modify the variables or characteristics (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity) other times due to ethical reasons (e.g. tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption). It was not feasible to modify (e.g. placement in a school or classroom) (Robson, 2011).
The research was a quantitative, non-experimental fixed design study.

Survey research was used to gather information about people’s beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and demographic composition. Survey data was collected by asking participants from a population a set of questions, which could be administered in a questionnaire that was mailed, emailed, or in an interview over the phone or in person (Leedy & Ormrod, 2013). In a sample survey researcher attempted to infer information about a population based on a representative sample drawn from that population. To generalize the findings from a sample to a population, the sample should accurately represent the population (Salkind, 2012). Robson (2011) stated that the details of the design should be fully pre-specified before the beginning of data collection. Gay et al. (2011) informed that correlational research involved data collection to determine relationship existence between two or more quantifiable

variables.
According to Robson (2011), there were distinct advantages in using surveys. Survey provided a simple and straightforward approach to the study of attitudes, values, beliefs, and motives; survey might be adapted to collected generalized information from a population; high amounts of data standardization; often survey was the only, or easiest, way to recover information about the past history; survey could efficiently provide large amounts of data at a low cost and in a short period of time; and survey allowed anonymity that could encourage honesty when sensitive areas were involved.
For the reasons stated above, the researcher chose a descriptive survey research methodology and s survey tool to assess the perceptions of early childcare staff regarding job satisfaction, job commitment, and program quality.

Because the researcher was interested to collect perceived thoughts and opinion about early childcare staffs’ job satisfaction, survey was the most applicable way of collecting data for the study. A survey instrument called Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey ECJSS (Bloom, 2010) and an additional Supplementary Information Sheet (SIS) were used to collect quantitative data. The ECJSS was a cross sectional survey that was utilized to collect data about early childcare staff opinions on job satisfaction and job commitment. SIS was an additional information sheet that gathered data about childcare staff on individual wage and program quality. The additional sheet included other demographic items about childcare staff. This survey had established reliability and validity listed in the manual (Bloom,

2010).
Population
A population was a group of potential participants to whom a researcher would generalize the results of a study (Leedy & Ormod, 2013). The population for the study was licensed early childhood centers in Illinois. The research population for the study was early childcare staff from childcare centers, home based programs in Illinois. The sample consisted of early childcare staff from a major Midwestern town in Illinois. The childcare staff included teachers, aids, home visitors, directors, executive directors, family service workers, and coordinators.
A sample was a subset of that population. Sample should be selected from populations in ways that it matched the characteristics of the population. The goal was to have a sample much like the population. A larger group was referred to as a population, and the smaller group selected from the population was called sample (Salkind, 2014). The sample drawn for the research was a non-probability in which the possibility of selecting any one member of the population was not known (Salkind, 2012). Larger sample size reduced sampling error. The sampling strategy was convenience sample due to the researcher’s access to licensed early childcare centers serving children from birth to 5 years old in a major Midwestern town in Illinois. A convenience sampling was a nonprobability sampling procedure where the selected participants represent a confined audience (Salkind, 2012). Convenience sample consisted of people or units readily available (Leedy & Ormrod, 2013). The sample included 12 early childhood centers. From those 12 early childhood centers, 135 teachers, coordinators, directors, and support staff participated in the survey. The participating early childhood centers included non-for-profit, profit, center-based, and home-based programs.
Ninety-one percent (123) participants were female and 9% (7) were males. Fifty six percent (76) participants were teachers, 20% (18) were support staff, 4.4% (6) were teacher/director, and 13.7% (17) were directors. Fifty-six percent (75) were Hispanic, 32% (44) were White, 3.7% (5) were Black, and 7.4% (10) were other. The mean age for this sample was 41 years. Fourteen percent (19) had High school diploma or GED, 33% (45) had Associates degree, 31% (42) had Bachelors degree, 17% (23) had Masters, and 0.7% (1) had a PHD. The mean number of years in the early childhood field was 12 whereas; mean years in the current center were 7.5 years. The mean wage per hour was $ 14.50. Thirty three percent (41) were part time employee and 67.4% (91) were full time worker.