Burchinal Margaret R, Clarke-Stewart K Alison
Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8185, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2007 Sep;43(5):1140-55. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.43.5.1140.
J. Brooks-Gunn, W. J. Han, and J. Waldfogel (2002) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (ECCRN; 2000b) came to different conclusions about the effects of maternal employment--although they were addressing similar questions using the same data set. Brooks-Gunn et al. concluded that maternal employment in infancy has a negative effect on children's cognitive abilities at age 3, whereas the ECCRN found that early nonmaternal care is not related to children's cognitive abilities in their first 3 years. The authors account for this difference by comparing 2 approaches to data analysis: a top-down testing of continuous variables (the approach used by the ECCRN, 2000b) and an a priori comparison approach that involves pairwise testing of specific dichotomous contrasts (the approach used by Brooks-Gunn et al., 2002). This comparison illustrates the critical importance of analytic approach. It also suggests that Brooks-Gunn et al.'s conclusion from this data set is overstated and should not be used on its own as the basis for practical or policy decisions.
J. 布鲁克斯 - 冈恩、W. J. 韩和J. 瓦尔德福格尔（2002年）以及美国国立儿童健康与人类发展研究所早期儿童保育研究网络（ECCRN；2000b）对于母亲就业的影响得出了不同结论——尽管他们使用相同的数据集探讨的是类似问题。布鲁克斯 - 冈恩等人得出结论，婴儿期母亲就业对孩子3岁时的认知能力有负面影响，而ECCRN发现早期非母亲照料与孩子头三年的认知能力无关。作者通过比较两种数据分析方法来解释这种差异：对连续变量的自上而下检验（ECCRN，2000b使用的方法）和一种先验比较方法，该方法涉及对特定二分对比进行成对检验（布鲁克斯 - 冈恩等人，2002年使用的方法）。这种比较说明了分析方法的至关重要性。它还表明，布鲁克斯 - 冈恩等人从该数据集中得出的结论有些夸大，不应仅凭此作为实际或政策决策的依据。
