The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families recognizes the difficulties in finding 

the appropriate data set to use in research.  In order to organize the data sets in a functional manner, the Center has created an interactive toolkit. The Center reviewed numerous data sets for the toolkit to consist of the following topics:

•  Unpacking Hispanic diversity – questions about nativity status, language proficiency, country of origin, etc.
• Families’ utilization of early care and education – questions about number of arrangements, provider type, financial assistance, etc.
• Early care and education search and decision-making – questions about difficulty of ECE search, barriers to access, and satisfaction with available early care and education options, etc.

Each data set is listed in rows and specific data elements are listed in columns.  The cells indicate YES/NO/PARTIAL to the data set and corresponding data elements. The toolkit is very user friendly and allows researchers to filter data sets to accommodate their needs.  Users can also scroll over the cell the learn more about how the question was asked and how data was collected based on responses.

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families plans to release a webinar in the future to train individuals on how to best utilize the interactive toolkit.