Child care shortages are an increasing concern nationwide, affecting families’ ability to work, attend school, and support their children’s development. To effectively address supply challenges, states and localities must better understand their child care supply, including what is available, where it is located, how well licensing data predicts supply, whether providers meet families’ needs, and the barriers to starting new child care businesses.

The Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) contracted with the Urban Institute to better understand child care supply. To accomplish this goal, we designed a mixed-methods study with help from the people closest to the supply—providers and regulators—to learn about four key features of licensed child care supply:

• Child care market characteristics 
• Child care supply and accuracy of supply data in administrative licensing systems
• Provider efforts to meet child and family needs and associated challenges
• Startup processes and experiences

This technical appendix describes our research approach and contains five sections:

• Overview: Overview of the research design and study methods
• Appendix A: Key measures, data sources, and analytic techniques
• Appendix B: Sampling and recruitment approach
• Appendix C: Survey response rates and nonresponse analyses; and
• Appendix D: Summary statistics for the survey questions with closed-option responses.

The following publications contain findings and recommendations drawing from the data and methods described in this technical appendix:

• Insights on Licensed Child Care for Children with Disabilities in Georgia
• Exploring Licensed Child Care Capacity, Enrollment, and Waiting Lists in Georgia
• Families that Georgia Child Care Providers Seek to Serve and What They Request
• Understanding Licensed Child Care Business Start-Up in Georgia

Other aspects of our work conducted in partnership with the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning can be found at on our website, https://www.urban.org/projects/strengthening-georgias-early-care-and-learning-system