An Assessment of the Validity of the ECERS-R with Implications for Measures of Child Care Quality and Relations to Child Development

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used to associate child care quality with child development, but its validity for this purpose is not well established. We examined the validity of the ECERS-R using the multidimensional Rasch partial credit model (PCM), factor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental psychology 2013-01, Vol.49 (1), p.146-160
Main Authors: Gordon, Rachel A, Fujimoto, Ken, Kaestner, Robert, Korenman, Sanders, Abner, Kristin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child Care
Child Care - methods
Child Development
Child Development - physiology
Child, Preschool
Childhood Development
Children
Cohort Studies
Credit
Developmental Measures
Developmental psychology
Discriminant analysis
Early childhood
Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale
Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey
Effect Size
Environment
Environmental Effects
Evaluation Methods
Factor Analysis
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Item Response Theory
Longitudinal studies
Male
Multiple Regression Analysis
Outcome Assessment, Health Care
Prediction
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Quality of Care
Rating Scales
Regression Analysis
Relationship
Reproducibility of Results
Test Validity
Validity
Young Children
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Summary:The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) is widely used to associate child care quality with child development, but its validity for this purpose is not well established. We examined the validity of the ECERS-R using the multidimensional Rasch partial credit model (PCM), factor analyses, and regression analyses with data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort. The PCM identified rating category disordering, indicating previously unrecognized problems with the scale's response process validity. Factor analyses identified neither a single factor nor the ECERS-R six subscales, replicating prior research regarding the scale's structural validity. Criterion validity results were mixed, with small effect sizes for regressions predicting child outcomes and moderate effect sizes for regressions predicting teacher-reported quality. Our results lend empirical support to recent critiques of the ECERS-R, and we discuss implications for its future use and for the development of future measures. (Contains 5 tables, 1 figure and 6 footnotes.)
ISSN:0012-1649
1939-0599
DOI:10.1037/a0027899