# Data From Early Childhood Educators’ Work and Stress Study

## TL;DR

This study provides a dataset tracking stress and work conditions of early childhood educators in the Midwest during the 2021–2022 academic year, including physiological stress markers.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is a publicly available dataset combining self-reported and physiological stress measures from early childhood educators during the pandemic.

## Key findings

- A dataset was collected from 67 educators across four time points, capturing job and general stress.
- Hair cortisol samples were collected at two time points to assess chronic physiological stress.
- The dataset is publicly available for research and teaching on educator stress during the pandemic.

## Abstract

This paper describes a longitudinal dataset of perceived job stress, perceived general stress, financial stress, demographics, and educational center characteristics of center-based early childhood educators in the Midwest across the academic year 2021–2022. At four time points, a convenience sample of 67 educators completed electronic surveys. At the first two time points, a subset provided hair cortisol samples to estimate physiological chronic stress. The publicly available, de-identified data can provide nuanced research and teaching opportunities into educators’ stressors during a dynamic period of the COVID-19 pandemic.