NIEER’s Preschool Learning Activities (PLA) Survey

Beginning in Spring of 2020 in partnership with the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, NIEER conducted a series of surveys on preschool program participation and learning activities in the home. Initially designed to measure the impacts of the pandemic on children ages three to five, the survey has continued beyond the initial years of the pandemic each fall after initially being a spring and fall survey. Survey topics include: preschool enrollment and experiences, parent-child activities in the home, children’s activities (indoor and outdoor play, screen time, reading, and creative and arts activities), children’s social and emotional development, access to print materials, and access to nature and outdoor play spaces. The survey was expanded to collect more information to explore specific topics over time. Many of the questions were designed to be comparable to questions in the 2019 National Household Education Survey to facilitate comparisons to a large nationally representative sample pre-Covid. The PLA survey sample is designed to be nationally representative, and responses are weighted for representativeness prior to analysis.