Revision and validation of a short scale to assess home environment for elementary school children in transnational families in Taiwan

Abstract

PurposeTo develop and test a brief scale of the home environment of elementary school children in transnational families or vulnerable families. Design and methodsThe scale development process took place in three phases. In the first phase, a 61-item scale was generated by an expert panel based upon related literature and Chinese Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (C-HOME). In the second phase 15 individual transnational families with elementary school children were interviewed, and items were reduced from 61 to 55 due to understandability or other practical considerations. Phase three's item analysis with 200 such families, reduced items to 41. Factor analysis followed, further reducing items to 27. Finally, the resulting 27-item scale underwent a test-retest with 57 subsample participants. ResultsAn iterative process of item and factor analyses identified a seven-dimensional, 27-item Home Environment Assessment Scale (HEAS), which accounted for 52.28% of the total variance. K-R 20 was 0.76. The test-retest reliability for the full sample total score was 0.97. ConclusionsThe results provide evidence supporting the scale consistency, content validity, and construct validity, and offer a useful instrument for health care professionals, especially pediatric nurses, to identify home environment interventions for young children in vulnerable families. Practice implicationsThe findings of HEAS-27 can serve to guide pediatric health care professionals in promptly screening, evaluating, and teaching families so that children in a vulnerable population have adequate quality and quantity of support in the home environment.