Christopher Jones

Christopher H. Jones is a researcher whose work focuses on early childhood programs and policies. He has a broad range of experience across the research process, including literature reviews, recruitment, implementation, quantitative and qualitative data collection and preparation, and analysis.

Jones’s current and recent early childhood projects include a study of home-based child care, for which he reviewed literature, developed a research agenda, and is planning a qualitative study of family, friend, and neighbor caregivers. He recruited programs and analyzed data from teachers and home visitors for the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES). For a study assessing the implementation and cost of high quality early child care and education, he conducted and oversaw in-depth implementation interviews. In addition, he led descriptive, quantitative analyses of state administration and survey data for a formative evaluation of progress toward improving pre-K quality in three states. He also reviewed literature and existing measures for a study of leadership in early childhood.

Jones has a variety of experience across other topic areas, encompassing projects in K–12 education (including evaluations of quality improvement in after-school programs and of teacher incentive programs) and family support (development of conceptual models of Adult Preparation Subjects for the Personal Responsibility Education Program). He has also worked on projects related to employment (an evaluation of a self-employment training demonstration), national service (a study of scaling effective interventions for AmeriCorps), and disability (an evaluation of a demonstration that altered benefit schedules for Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries).

Before joining Mathematica in 2011, Jones worked at the U.S. Department of Defense agency that educates defense acquisition staff. His interest in early childhood policy began in college when he learned about the dramatic long-term benefits of the Perry Preschool Project. He holds an M.P.P. in economic and social policy from Georgetown University.