Early Head Start has a long tradition of evaluation and descriptive research, beginning with the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project that was launched in 1995 when the program began. More recently, the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES 2009), funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), followed a nationally representative sample of 89 programs and two cohorts of children enrolled in the programs. This report summarizes lessons learned from the design of Baby FACES 2009 and describes ways that future descriptive studies of Early Head Start may be designed to build on past work and address the questions and information needs for research, policy, and practice.