Discretion and the administrator: The case of child care reform in Ohio

摘要

This dissertation is an assessment of factors that affect the 88 directors of the Ohio County Department of Job and Family Services (CDJFS) agencies likely use of administrative discretion based on resources available to implement child care policy (i.e., funding, staff, technical support and training, number of providers, years of experience as CDJFS director, and the number of hours per week spent implementing child care policy). Directors' use of administrative discretion is analyzed using a qualitative (interview) and quantitative (survey) approach commonly referred to as triangulation. By combining the results of the qualitative and quantitative phases of the study, the researcher was able to gain relevant information regarding the directors' perceptions of their use of administrative discretion based on the resources they have available to implement child care policy in their county.;Using SPSS, this study employed content and regression analysis to analyze the qualitative and quantitative data collected from the interviews and questionnaires. This assessment includes an overview of the devolution of child care policy implementation from the federal to state government, the relationship between implementation and the exercise of administrative discretion, and current research on child care policy implementation. An examination of the results obtained from the content analysis in this study revealed that the CDJFS directors used administrative discretion to implement child care policy, but their use of administrative discretion was limited by the number of staff they had available to assist with child care policy implementation and the number of certified providers certified in their county. Although the regression analysis did not yield significant results, more than half of the CDJFS directors interviewed, indicated they were likely to use administrative discretion to implement child care policy based on the availability of resources.