Instrument Development and Validation of the Home Child Care Version of the Assessment for Quality Improvement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research Findings: Measures of home child care (HCC) quality are limited and tend to be labor intensive. This article presents the measure development process as well as psychometric, construct, convergent and discriminant validity analyses for the HCC version of the Assessment for Quality Improvement (HCC-AQI) measure. The HCC-AQI is part of a suite of observational measures developed by the City of Toronto for use in its early childhood education and care Quality Rating and Improvement System. It takes 60–90 minutes to administer, making it significantly more efficient than other measures. Instrument development involved expert panels and item response theory analyses. Exploratory factor analyses and internal consistency analyses indicate that the HCC-AQI measure can be categorized into two subscales: Physical Space and Experiences and Caregiver/Child Interactions. Moderately strong correlations between these subscales also support computing total HCC-AQI scores. Correlations between the Infant/Toddler and Early Childhood Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment and the Responsive Interactions for Learning scale were moderate, providing evidence for convergent validity. Practice or Policy: the HCC-AQI is a promising efficient measure of HCC that can be used for research as well as quality improvement and accountability purposes.