Manica Ramos is a developmental psychologist who conducts mixed methods research. Her research focuses on early care and education programs, specifically, parental engagement, assessing the quality of parent-teacher relationships, understanding and measuring cultural sensitivity and parental empowerment, and conducting evaluations of early care and education interventions. She also focuses on the Latino community, she has examined how Latino cultural values and belief shape Latinos’ behaviors related to: parental engagement in their young children’s learning and development; teens and young adults’ access to and use of family planning services and their contraceptive behaviors; and union formation and stability among young couples. She is also interested in facilitators and barriers to service access and use among Latinos. Manica conducts research in English and Spanish and has expertise in survey development and design, survey question wording, focus groups and cognitive interviewing, and semi-structured and structured interviews.

Dr. Ramos serves as the center operations director for the National Early Care and Education Workforce Center, an ACF-funded initiative to support the early childhood workforce by identifying effective policies and strategies through research and evaluation, translating lessons from research for practice, and supporting innovations in states and communities through technical assistance.