AN EVALUATION OF THE HIGHBERGER EARLY-ADJUSTMENT-TO-SCHOOL SCALE

Abstract

Highberger (4) has described a method for measuring the young child's initial adjustment to nursery school. This Early-Adjustment-to-School Scale (EAS) is a global measure of adjustment composed of ratings on 54 behavior items. The items included in this scale cover a broad range of social and emotional behaviors commonly observed in groups of 2- and 3-year-old children. Most prominent in the scale would seem to be items relating to dependency-withdrawal, sociability, assertiveness, and some forms of aggression. The procedure for the EAS includes: (a) systematic observation of the children in a preschool group from the fifth through fifteenth days of school attendance; (b) recording, during this time, the frequency with which the individual child evidences each type of behavior included in the scale; (c) preparation of ratings based on the observation records; (d) combining the ratings into a total EAS score. There are a number of uses for a reasonably objective method of evaluating the child's early adjustment to school. Workers with groups of children are often concerned about the effects of group experience on the 2- or 3-year-old. Yet teachers have lacked objective criteria with which to assess the child's behavior during the early weeks of preschool experience. Developmental psychologists have been interested in the young child's reactions to separation from his mother, both as a consequence of the nature of early mother-child interaction and as a predictor of later trends in personality development. The Highberger technique offers promising aid in approaching problem areas such as these. Although it is based on a broad definition of adjustment (and thus poses some problems for the researcher or teacher), the EAS introduces greater precision to the measurement of initial school adjustment than has been the case heretofore. The EAS is, however, extremely cumbersome and time-consuming (hence expensive) to use. Ten days of concentrated observation are needed prior to rating and the ratings themselves are difficult for an unsophisticated observer. In her original publication Highberger reported data relating to the reliability of total EAS scores, the reliability of individual items, and the relation of EAS total scores to teacher judgments of the child's adjustment and to a measure of maternal behavior. It seems, however, that empirical