View the full project profile

Project Description

The Carolina Abecedarian project was designed to study the impact of educational intervention in the lives of preschool-aged children from low-income families. An important goal of the project was to break the so-called "poverty cycle" by better preparing children for success in school--and eventually, life.

For as many as eight years, children from birth to age 5 received an educational intervention; researchers measured cognitive achievement and other factors through a battery of standardized measures.

Upon completion of the intervention, the children entered school ; they were studied and tested again at ages 12, 15 and 21 years.

Project duration: Jan 1972 - Jan 1987

Sites studied include North Carolina

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

The Carolina Abecedarian Project was designed as a randomized, controlled trial. The project began recruiting subjects in the summer of 1972, gathering a pool of 111 children and their families. The pool was divided into an experimental group of 57 children and a control group of 54 children. Both groups received nutritional supplements during the first years of life, and social service referrals when needed throughout the first eight years of life.

The 57 infants and their families randomly assigned to the Experimental Group received a carefully monitored educational intervention for the first five years of life. These children received a year-round, all-day educational childcare/preschool program emphasizing the development of cognitive, language, and adaptive behavior skills.

The 54 assigned to the control group received nutritional supplements in infancy and supportive social services. The control group, however, received no educational intervention.

To test hypotheses about the educational intervention, researchers added a school-age treatment phase. Half of the children who received the five-year preschool intervention were randomly assigned to receive another 3 years of educational intervention. The other half was not treated during this period. Similarly, the original control group was randomly divided into school-age intervention and control groups.

Recent Findings in Brief

Contact