The present paper summarizes a project designed to develop and field test a guide to aid parents in selecting quality day care for their children. A set of items characterizing high quality day care programs were rationally derived and presented to both day care professionals and mothers of preschool children to obtain their evaluations of each item's operational clarity and face validity. Field testing revealed that young women inexperienced in day care selection could reliably agree in their observations of whether several local day care centers possess the characteristics described in the guide. The usefulness of the guide was also demonstrated when women who used the guide made judgments of center quality that were highly similar to those made independently on the same centers by a group of local day care experts, while women who visited the centers without the guide failed to match the experts judgments and differentiate the centers' quality levels.