A Year in the Life of a Pandemic: What We’ve Learned Listening to Family Voices

To date, there have been 54 RAPID-EC online surveys and 10,707 families across all 50 states who have participated. These families are diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, income, and family structure. They have contributed to an extensive and growing one-of-a-kind quantitative dataset and given voice to their experiences in over 140,000 responses to open-ended questions. The RAPID-EC survey has helped tell the story of American families with young children during this remarkable time.

Many of the issues that we have seen affecting families over the last year predate the pandemic and will remain once infection rates fade out and masks come off. These are issues that have long-demanded but not received adequate attention. They are issues that we must keep in focus during the recovery period and beyond. The RAPID-EC team will be continuing to survey families with young children and adding to their voices, those of child care providers, but in this posting, we look back at three overarching findings from the first year of the survey.