Development and Assessment of Young Children

Developmental assessment of Young children 4 (1+3)

Lesson 4:Environmental Assessment

Tools used to assess different environments

These include tools used to assess

• Home environments,
• Infant & preschool centre environments and
• Hospital Environments

1. Home Environment: This is the environment in which infants and preschoolers spend considerable time. Early interventionists particularly those working in home based infant programmes may be interested in assessing the home environment to determine the extent to which it is safe, warm and developmentally facilitative. The assessment instruments/tools used for assessing home environments include
• Home Observation and measurement of environment (HOME) developed by Caldwell & Bradley (1972) give the following as link

  Home Observation and measurement of environment {HOME (Caldwell & Bradley (1972}: It is designed to assess the quantity and quality of physical environment of the home and support provided by the family for children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. It has two versions one for children from 0-3 years and another for children of 3-6 years.

Version for 0-3 years:
It has 45 items distributed in 6 subscales like
• Emotional and verbal responsiveness of mother
• Avoidance of restriction and punishment
• Organization of physical and temporal environment
• Provision of appropriate play materials
• Maternal involvement with child
• Opportunities for variety in daily stimulation.

Preschool version: it has 55 items distributed in 8 subscales like

• Stimulation through toys, games and reading materials
• Language stimulation
• Physical environment
• Pride affection and warmth
• Stimulation of academic behavior
• Modeling and encouraging of social maturity
• Variety of stimulation
• Physical punishment
• Purde Home Stimulation Inventory: It was developed to assess the infant’s physical environment provided in the home. It consists of 30 items. Interviews and observations are used to collect information. It assesses dimensions such as routines, number of adults and siblings living in the home, materials available and activity levels.
2. Assessing infant & preschool centre environments: The instruments used to rate the quality of infant and preschool centre environments include
• Early childhood Environment rating scale (ECERS)
• The infant Toddler environment rating scale (ITERS)
• Family day care rating scale (FDCRS)
• Early childhood physical environment scale (Moore,1982)
• Preschool assessment of the class room environment (PACE) by Mc. William & Dunst,1985.

Early childhood Environment rating scale (ECERS): It was designed to give an overall picture of the surroundings for children and adults in preschool settings. Including the use of space, materials and activities to enhance children’s development, daily schedule and supervision. It has 37 items organized in 7 subscales like

• Personal care routine
• Furnishings and display
• Language – reasoning experiences
• Fine & gross motor activities
• Creative activities
• Social development
• Adult needs.

The information is collected through interviews and observation.
The infant Toddler environment rating scale (ITERS) : This scale is used to assess the quality of care provided for children under 30 months.
Family day care rating scale (FDCRS) : It is designed to assess the quality of care provided in a family day care home.


3. Assessing Hospital Environments :It includes assessment of Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and Pediatric unit
   Informal assessment techniques are used to assess the areas like
• Noise levels : Assessment concentrates on sleep disturbances caused due to noise which has negative physiological consequences
• Light : damages retina if 24 hours bright lights are used in NICU
• Handling: high frequency of handling sick children disrupt sleep patterns and is painful.
• Early learning: NICU is not usually an environment that facilitates early learning. Social interactions are brief.

By adapting the eco behavioural approach to assessment, infants can be evaluated in terms of spending time, behavioural and developmental consequences of the same.