Examining the psychometric properties of the Infant–Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition in a high-stakes context

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Abstract

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 selected randomly and by experts who rated items according to ease of administration and importance to quality. The shorter subsets demonstrated good discriminant validity, adequate to good psychometric properties, and high associations to the full ITERS-R score. They also demonstrated similar associations to staff education and staff-to-child ratio, as the full instrument. The best assessment of quality was demonstrated by the shortened subset that included items that assess both structural and process features of quality. Multilevel-analyses indicated that classrooms from the same providers score more similarly on ITERS-R than classrooms from other providers. The implications for using the ITERS-R in high-stakes contexts are discussed.

Section snippets

Sample

The sample consisted of 153 classrooms from 59 Colorado child-care centers. Staff from Qualistar Early Learning, a non-profit quality improvement agency in Denver, Colorado collected the data from July 2007 to February 2008. Centers were involved in a variety of child-care quality improvement efforts in Colorado and many had been previously assessed using the ITERS. The majority of infant/toddler classrooms in this sample were participating in a public policy initiative in Colorado aimed at

Descriptive statistics

In Table 1 we present the descriptive statistics of the ‘Full-ITERS-R score’ which ranged from 2 to 7, with a mean of 4.9. This mean falls within the ‘good’ category using the classification system developed by Howes, Phillips, and Whitebrook (1992). The high mean is probably explained by the fact that many of the providers in this study had participated in quality improvement initiatives and had been previously assessed for quality. On average, teachers had few ECE credits (M = 8.82) and the

Discussion

This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the ITERS-R; a widely used scale for the measurement of child-care quality. Results from an exploratory factor analysis indicate that all items load on a single factor, suggesting that the instrument does not measure six distinct dimensions of quality (recall that data on the 7th scale ‘Parents and Staff’ were not available). The high internal consistency estimates of the full instrument and strong inter-item correlations further suggest that

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the staff from Qualistar Early Learning center in Denver, Colorado for allowing us to use their child care center data.

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