purposes, all of which they were asked to indicate in the survey. A total of 25 providers completed the registration. All providers who registered were sent a confirmation email and a reminder email shortly before the focus group they registered to participate in. Overall, 10 providers attended the focus groups. Exhibit A.4. includes characteristics of child care providers who participated in the provider focus groups. These summary characteristics were collected when individuals registered to participate in the focus groups using the Qualtrics registration surveys.
Exhibit A.4. Characteristics of Provider Focus Group Participants
Characteristic
n
Percent
Type of child care provider Child care center Family child care home Position of participant * Executive director
8 2
80% 20%
1 3 2 2
10% 30% 20% 20%
Director
Director/Administrator
Owner/Operator
Administrator 20% *Survey respondents were able to choose multiple positions out of the following options: director, owner/operator, administrator, senior staff, teacher, and not listed (specify). Two respondents chose both director and administrator. These responses were grouped together in this table. 2 All focus groups lasted one hour and 30 minutes and were facilitated virtually on Zoom in English. Focus groups were audio and video recorded, and a notetaker was present during all focus groups to summarize findings in real time. Transcripts were also produced for each focus group. Focus group participants each received a $100 gift card. After completing the focus groups, each transcript was uploaded to the software Dedoose for analysis. Based on the focus group notes, MEF staff developed a codebook with themes that reflected responses to each of the focus group protocol questions and other important themes that arose during the focus groups. MEF created nine parent codes representing large themes and a total of 52 child codes that were categorized under the parent codes to provide more in-depth analysis of each theme. After the codebook was developed, two MEF staff coded each focus group transcript by reading through the transcript, highlighting excerpts, and assigning these excerpts codes from the codebook. Throughout the process, MEF staff added codes for new themes that arose. Once coding was complete, highlighted and coded excerpts were exported into an Excel spreadsheet with their assigned codes. These excerpts were organized based on the assigned codes to analyze the themes and understand the prevalence of different experiences of providers across focus group participants.
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