The purposes of this study are to examine the reported childrearing beliefs and practices of family day home caregivers, to examine the reported childrearing beliefs and practices of parents whose children are in a family day home, and to determine the congruency of the reported childrearing beliefs and practices between caregivers and parents. The childrearing beliefs and practices selected for the study are in the areas of discipline, sleeping, feeding-eating, toilet training, sex-role development, and selected home activities.

This study investigated the successful outcomes and practices, the problems and the system of evaluation of the Parent Involvement program of the Follow Through models. The purposes of this research were to describe parent involvement in Follow Through and to utilize these data to formulate an ideal parent involvement program for an early childhood center. One instrument, a questionnaire, was developed to collect the data. The questionnaire consisted of 37 items with two main sections on successful outcomes and practices, and problems in parent-child relationships, parent-school relationships, and in parent-community relationships, and evaluation of parent involvement. Findings reveal that parent involvement in Follow Through has been successful. Successful outcomes in parent-child relationships, successful outcomes in parent-school relationships, and successful outcomes were found in parent-community relationships.

This study compared three groups of day care directors with regard to their levels of death anxiety and their responses to situations involving death that affect children in the day care center. In addition, the study compared the variables of age, years of experience in day care, parental status, and self-reported degree of religiosity with the directors' levels of death anxiety and their responses to simulated death situations. A possible relationship between the levels of death anxiety of the directors and their responses to simulated death situations was also investigated.

This study explored the attitudes of four professional groups toward selected adult behaviors in order to gain an insight into their definitions of abuse and neglect. A sample was drawn from the population of pediatricians, psychologists, teachers, and social workers employed in a large metropolitan area of North Central Texas. A total of 190 subjects participated. The instrument used to quantify the attitudes of the respondents was a five-point rating scale, the ABTC Rating Scale. The rating scale was composed of thirty-six adult behaviors selected from the "gray areas" of child abuse and neglect. Participants rated the thirty-six behavior items according to how harmful they perceived each behavior to be for a five-to-six year old child. It was concluded that of the variables tested, those that appear to have the most influence on the differences in responses are professional membership and sex. It is possible that the differences found are due as much to the sex of the respondent as to professional membership. Teachers and females may react more strongly to the behaviors almost universally.