Abstract

Differences in the experiences of individual children within early childhood education and care (ECEC) classrooms have been largely overlooked. This may be due, in part, to a lack of validated, efficient measures of dyadic interactions between educators and individual children. There are however small amounts of evidence that children within the same classrooms have different experiences, in terms of the quality of care they receive. The aim of this study is to evaluate the psychometric properties of an adaptation of the Responsive Interactions for Learning – Educator version (RIFL-Ed) to capture the interactions of an educator-child dyad (ECD). We test the internal structure and convergent validity for this cost-effective, efficient educator-child dyad (RIFL-ECD) measure. Ninety-five early childhood educators, from 41 toddler classrooms (i.e., children between 18 and 30 months of age) across 30 centers were included. Instrument development involved the adaptation of language across items of the RIFL-Ed, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis on separate subsamples to investigate the structural validity of the RIFL-ECD. Convergent validity was investigated by comparing RIFL-ECD scores to other measures of quality. Results supported a unidimensional factor structure for RIFL-ECD, demonstrating adequate structural validity. Convergent validity investigation demonstrated correlations between RIFL-ECD and RIFL-Ed (r = .78, p < .001), and the Engaged Support for Learning subscale score (r = .32, p = .003), but not Emotional Behavioral and Support subscale score, of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. Implications for the interpretation and use of the RIFL-ECD measure of child-level child-care quality are discussed.

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