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Using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised in High Stakes Contexts: Does Evidence Warrant the Practice?

ABSTRACT: Increasingly, states establish different thresholds on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R), and use these thresholds to inform high-stakes decisions. However, the validity of the ECERS-R for these purposes is not well established. The objective of this study is to identify thresholds on the ECERS-R that are associated with preschool-aged children's social and cognitive development. Applying non-parametric modeling to the nationally-representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) dataset, we found that once classrooms achieved a score of 3.4 on the overall ECERS-R composite score, there was a leveling-off effect, such that no additional improvements to children's social, cognitive, or language outcomes were observed. Additional analyses found that ECERS-R subscales that focused on teaching and caregiving processes, as opposed to the physical environment, did not show leveling-off effects. The findings suggest that the usefulness of the ECERS-R for discerning associations with children's outcome may be limited to certain score ranges or subscales.

SUBMITTER: Setodji CM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5788317 | biostudies-literature | 2018 1st Quarter

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised in High Stakes Contexts: Does Evidence Warrant the Practice?

Setodji Claude Messan CM Schaack Diana D Le Vi-Nhuan VN

Early childhood research quarterly 20171010

Increasingly, states establish different thresholds on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R), and use these thresholds to inform high-stakes decisions. However, the validity of the ECERS-R for these purposes is not well established. The objective of this study is to identify thresholds on the ECERS-R that are associated with preschool-aged children's social and cognitive development. Applying non-parametric modeling to the nationally-representative Early Childhood Longit ...[more]

PMID: 29391663

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Project description:The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) and its revised version (ECERS-R) were designed as global measures of quality that assess structural and process aspects of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) programs. Despite frequent use of the ECERS/ECERS-R in research and applied settings, associations between it and child outcomes have not been systematically reviewed. The objective of this research was to evaluate the association between the ECERS/ECERS-R and children's wellbeing. Searches of Medline, PsycINFO, ERIC, websites of large datasets and reference sections of all retrieved articles were completed up to July 3, 2015. Eligible studies provided a statistical link between the ECERS/ECERS-R and child outcomes for preschool-aged children in ECEC programs. Of the 823 studies selected for full review, 73 were included in the systematic review and 16 were meta-analyzed. The combined sample across all eligible studies consisted of 33, 318 preschool-aged children. Qualitative systematic review results revealed that ECERS/ECERS-R total scores were more generally associated with positive outcomes than subscales or factors. Seventeen separate meta-analyses were conducted to assess the strength of association between the ECERS/ECERS-R and measures that assessed children's language, math and social-emotional outcomes. Meta-analyses revealed a small number of weak effects (in the expected direction) between the ECERS/ECERS-R total score and children's language and positive behavior outcomes. The Language-Reasoning subscale was weakly related to a language outcome. The enormous heterogeneity in how studies operationalized the ECERS/ECERS-R, the outcomes measured and statistics reported limited our ability to meta-analyze many studies. Greater consistency in study methodology is needed in this area of research. Despite these methodological challenges, the ECERS/ECERS-R does appear to capture aspects of quality that are important for children's wellbeing; however, the strength of association is weak.

Project description:BACKGROUND: In developing the PatientsLikeMe online platform for patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), we required a patient-reported assessment of functional status that was easy to complete and identified disability in domains other than walking. Existing measures of functional status were inadequate, clinician-reported, focused on walking, and burdensome to complete. In response, we developed the Multiple Sclerosis Rating Scale (MSRS). METHODS: We adapted a clinician-rated measure, the Guy's Neurological Disability Scale, to a self-report scale and deployed it to an online community. As part of our validation process we reviewed discussions between patients, conducted patient cognitive debriefing, and made minor improvements to form a revised scale (MSRS-R) before deploying a cross-sectional survey to patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) on the PatientsLikeMe platform. The survey included MSRS-R and comparator measures: MSIS-29, PDDS, NARCOMS Performance Scales, PRIMUS, and MSWS-12. RESULTS: In total, 816 RRMS patients responded (19% response rate). The MSRS-R exhibited high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha?=?.86). The MSRS-R walking item was highly correlated with alternative walking measures (PDDS, ??=?.84; MSWS-12, ??=?.83; NARCOMS mobility question, ??=?.86). MSRS-R correlated well with comparison instruments and differentiated between known groups by PDDS disease stage and relapse burden in the past two years. Factor analysis suggested a single factor accounting for 51.5% of variance. CONCLUSIONS: The MSRS-R is a concise measure of MS-related functional disability, and may have advantages for disease measurement over longer and more burdensome instruments that are restricted to a smaller number of domains or measure quality of life. Studies are underway describing the use of the instrument in contexts outside our online platform such as clinical practice or trials. The MSRS-R is released for use under creative commons license.

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Using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised in High Stakes Contexts: Does Evidence Warrant the Practice?

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Using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised in High Stakes Contexts: Does Evidence Warrant the Practice?

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