Bettye M. Caldwell

Measuring the Home Environments of Children in Early Adolescence

This article describes the development of the Early Adolescent version of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (EA-HOME) Inventory and presents information regarding its usefulness in 5 sociocultural groups (African Americans, Chinese Americans, European Americans, Mexican Americans, and Dominican Americans). EA-HOME is designed to measure the quantity and quality of stimulation, support, and structure available to children ages 10 through 15 in their home environments. Results indicate high interobserver agreement for those using the measure. EA-HOME scores were significantly related to scores on measures of family context and child development for each sociocultural group, but patterns of association varied somewhat across groups.

The Child Care HOME Inventories: Assessing the Quality of Family Child Care Homes.

Abstract Versions of the HOME Inventory for use in family child care homes are described. The Infant/Toddler version is designed for use when children are less than 3 years old; the Early Childhood version for children ages 3–6. Psychometric characteristics of the child care versions of HOME are similar to the psychometric characteristics found for the original HOME used to measure the family environment. Child Care HOME scores were strongly related to intensive observational measures of behavior among child care providers and to measures of physical and organizational aspects of the environment. Because the inventories take less time and training to administer than most current measures of family child care, they may provide a way for licensing workers and others responsible for maintaining quality in child care to obtain useful information about this widely used but minimally monitored form of non-parental care.

Parents' socioemotional investment in children

ROBERT H. BRADLEY, LEANNE WHITESIDE-MANSELL, AND JUDITH A. BRISBY University of Arkansas at Little Rock BETTYE M. CALDWELL University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences* Parental Investment in Children (PIC) is a 24item questionnaire designed to assess parents socioemotional investment in their children. PIC is composed of four scales: Acceptance of the Parenting Role, Delight, Knowledge/Sensitivity, and Separation Anxiety. Assessment of this type of investment is important because there is limited research on the parents side of the attachment system and because the attitudes and behaviors that represent parental investment may be central targets of parental education and guidance programs. This study evaluates the reliability and validity of PIC in a sample of 137 mothers of 15month-old children. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the four scales were internally consistent. Results also indicated from moderate to high test-retest reliability and substantial evidence of construct validity. For purposes of this study, PIC scores were related to scores on the quality of caregiving, social support, the quality of marital relationships, maternal depression, neuroticism, and agreeableness, maternal separation anxiety, parenting stress, and child difficulty. Key Words: attachment, bonding, confirmatory factor analysis, home environment, parenting, separation anxiety. During the past quarter century there has been an increasing appreciation of the organization of the attachment system in relation to the attachment figure (i.e., children are believed to develop an internal working model of attachment with cognitive as well as emotional components) and the transmission of these internal working models from generation to generation (Lebovici, 1993). Children construct a working model of their relationship with caregivers based on exchanges with those caregivers over an extended period of time. Particularly important for the development of a childs internal model of attachment is the availability and responsiveness of the caregiver, especially during times of distress. Children who receive sensitive caregiving are believed to construct an internal representation of the caregiver as warm and responsive and of themselves as worthy of love and support, a secure attachment. According to attachment theory, such children accordingly feel comfortable to explore and usefully exploit their environments, an adaptive developmental outcome (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1969; Bretherton, 1985). At times of distress, a child with a secure attachment will seek comfort from the caregiver. Once comfort is given, distress is relieved, and the child becomes active again in exploring the environment. By contrast, children with insecure attachments see themselves as unworthy and their caregivers as unpredictable. Research demonstrates that a childs internal working model, though open to change based on new experiences, plays an instrumental role in a wide variety of behavioral domains (Booth, Rose-Krasnegor, McKinnon, & Rubin, 1994; Sroufe, 1985; Teti & Abelard, 1985). Although Bowlbys (1969) ethological theory of attachment makes clear that attachment is a relational process in which both caregiver and child endeavor to maintain proximity and closeness, the focus of most attachment research and most attachment measures has been on the childs side of the relationship. This disparity of focus arises because of the postulated centrality of attachment security for childrens development (Bretherton, 1985). The quality of a childs attachment appears closely tied to the caregivers own personal developmental history and the attitudes and expectations derived from that history. Specifically, there is evidence indicating that childrens attachment classifications can be predicted from their caregivers own recollections about experiences with their own caregivers (i. …

Impact of the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) on the Home Environments of Infants Born Prematurely and with Low Birthweight.

The Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) was designed to improve the development of infants born prematurely and at low birthweight with a combination of (a) education and support services for mothers, and (b) educational day care and health services for children. A randomized clinical trial procedure was used at 8 program sites to examine the impact of the IHDP on the quality of stimulation and support available to children in the home, as measured by the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory. There were no effects on HOME scores at 1 year, but differences favoring the intervention group were noted on 5 of 8 HOME subscales at 3 years. Separate factor analyses of the HOME Inventory revealed that intervention and follow-up groups had similar underlying structures at both time points