The ABC Quality program, South Carolina's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), is a statewide system designed to improve the quality of early care and education services. Historically, two observation instruments are used for centers that elect to participate in the state's voluntary QRIS depending on the level of quality for which they…

Research Findings: There is a growing need for accurate and efficient measures of classroom quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Observational measures are costly, as their administration generally takes 3-5 hr per classroom. This article outlines the process of development and preliminary concurrent validity testing of…

Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS) frequently include the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ITERS-R) as part of rating and improving child care quality. However, studies utilizing the ITERS-R consistently report low quality, especially for basic caregiving items. This research examined whether the low scores reflected the…

The psychometric properties of the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (ITERS-R) were examined using 153 classrooms from child-care centers where resources were tied to center performance. An exploratory factor analysis revealed that the scale measures one global aspect of quality. To decrease redundancy, subsets of items were…

Evaluated versions of the HOME Inventory for use in assessing family child care homes. Found that psychometric properties of child care versions of HOME were similar to those of the original HOME for the family environment. Child care HOME scores were strongly related to observational measures of caregiver behavior and to measures of physical and…