Citation: Moore, Gary T., and Takemi Sugiyama (2007). âThe Children's .... social, and emotional development (see early summary in Moore 1987, and later in.
Children, Youth and Environments 17(4), 2007
The Children’s Physical Environment Rating Scale (CPERS): Reliability and Validity for Assessing the Physical Environment of Early Childhood Educational Facilities Gary T. Moore Takemi Sugiyama
Environment, Behaviour and Society Research Group University of Sydney, Australia
Citation: Moore, Gary T., and Takemi Sugiyama (2007). “The Children’s Physical Environment Rating Scale (CPERS): Reliability and Validity for Assessing the Physical Environment of Early Childhood Educational Facilities.” Children, Youth and Environments 17(4): 24-53. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye.
Abstract
This paper summarizes a series of studies conducted to test the reliability and validity of a new scale intended for the assessment of early childhood development centers (such as child care centers, nursery schools, kindergartens, and the like). The physical environment of early childhood facilities—e.g., size, density, plan type, activity settings—is related to children’s cognitive and social development. While a number of tools exist for assessing childcare settings, the new Children’s Physical Environments Rating Scale (CPERS) is the first to assess the physical environment of early childhood environments. The new scale is based on an interactionalconstructivist theory, the research literature, international preschool standards, and the wisdom of leading European educators. CPERS is comprised of 124 items organized into 14 subscales focusing on planning, overall architectural quality, indoor activity spaces, and outdoor play areas. This paper summarizes the background, organization, and content of CPERS, and reports on the methods and results of a series of reliability and validity studies conducted between 1997 and 2003. The results indicated high internal consistency, high inter-rater and testretest reliabilities, and very high construct validity of CPERS and confirmed its utility for both research and general use in a variety of applications.
Keywords: accreditation standards, children’s environments, child care centers, kindergartens, preschools, nursery schools, rating scales, post-occupancy evaluation, reliability, validity
© 2007 Children, Youth and Environments
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Introduction, Aims and Purposes
The aim of this paper is to provide psychometric properties of the Children’s Physical Environment Rating Scale (CPERS), a rating scale designed to evaluate the quality of the physical environment of early childhood facilities. The motivation for this research was to provide a new instrument that would satisfy five purposes: 1. Provide a robust, scientifically reliable and valid assessment tool that would enable the evaluation of the physical designed environment of early childhood education facilities in order to identify areas of needed renovation or expansion vis-à-vis child development and early childhood education principles (post-occupancy evaluation, or POE); 2. Enable comparison of findings by providing an evaluation tool that could be used across a wide variety of studies and settings in various parts of the world; 3. Assist in fundamental research on the relation between the physical environment and child development; 4. Provide systematic, evaluative information on the quality of childcare settings for policy makers, managers, childhood educators, architects and parents; and 5. Serve as a shorthand design guide for the programming (or briefing), design, and pre-occupancy design evaluation of new centers or the renovation of existing settings. The next section of the paper embeds the studies on which we report into a broader context of current research knowledge and gaps. The middle section reports on the methods and results of our reliability studies and validity studies. The paper concludes with an overall summary of our results, followed by a discussion on applications of the scale and areas for future research.
Background Research on the Quality of Early Childhood Development Programs To put the following studies into context, it is important to recall that research over the previous 30 years has consistently found that child care in licensed early childhood centers has a positive effect on children’s development and early childhood education (see reviews in Belsky, Steinberg and Walker 1982; Bredekamp 1986; Clarke-Stewart and Fein 1983; Katz and Walsh 1991; Peters and Pence 1992; Phillips 1987). The results of the most recent, large U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) study supports and extends these findings (see Allhusen et al. 2002; Burchinal et al. 1996; Peisner-Feinberg et al. 2001). Taken collectively, the studies draw a number of conclusions. Perhaps the most pervasive finding is that formal childcare contributes to cognitive development for preschool children, especially for economically disadvantaged children, and leads to greater intellectual competence and cognitive maturity for a broad range of children. The most important determinants of the quality of early education—for cognitive as
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well as social and affective development—have been found to include the presence of teachers and caregivers who have specialized training in child development and early childhood education, low staff-child ratios, quality of the curriculum and other characteristics of the interactions among children and adults. Starting in the 1970s, these and similar findings have been translated into textbooks, readers, and articles on staffing and curriculum which have lead to a marked improvement in early childhood programs (e.g., Arthur et al. 1996; DeVries and Kohlberg 1987; Dodge and Colker 1996; Evans, Shub and Weinstein 1971; Edwards, Gandini and Forman 1998; and many others). These texts include chapters on such topics as developmentally appropriate practices, goals and objectives, programming and curriculum, staffing, family participation, meeting the needs of individual children, schedule and routines, and evaluation. However, only in some of the most recent publications has there been any— although still scant—attention to the role of the physical environment. For example, a recent 343-page textbook on programming and planning early childhood “settings” (Dodge and Colker 1996) has one page on play spaces, five on physical appearance, and seven on other aspects of the physical environment—i.e., less than one-half of 1 percent of the content of this major text addresses anything remotely concerning the physical environment. While the book acknowledges that children physically explore their environment and includes photographs of spatial exploration, treatment of the quality of the physical environment to support these important developments is scant at best. The “environment” in the vast majority of such texts continues to refer to the social environment of staff, curriculum, and child-adult interactions, with little or no attention to the physical, designed environment. Previous Research on the Physical, Designed Environment and Human Development Nevertheless, research has found that the quality of the physical, designed environment of early childhood centers—such factors as size, density, privacy, welldefined activity settings, modified open-plan space, a variety of technical design features, and the quality of outdoor play spaces—is related to children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development (see early summary in Moore 1987, and later in Evans 2006). For instance, research has found that more exploratory behavior is found in formal child care centers compared to family day-care homes and in-home care (Prescott 1973). Furthermore, we know that smaller centers with fewer children offer better quality childcare (e.g., Prescott, Jones and Kritchevsky 1972; Ruopp et al. 1979; Travers and Ruopp 1978). It has also been found that the group size in which children spend most of their time in early childhood centers has a very large impact on a number of developmental indicators, including on verbal initiative, reflective behavior, and more task-involved behavior, as well as on standard measures of development (Travers and Ruopp 1978). It may not seem that group size is a physical environmental variable, and strictly speaking, it is not; but it does have enormous implications for the layout and design of child care settings in order to
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facilitate or “set the stage” for smaller groups sizes (as discussed below). Density also has an influence on development, as shown by Maxwell’s (1996) study that found that in comparison to uncrowded facilities, children in crowded centers are more likely to exhibit aggressiveness, withdrawal, and hyperactivity. Research also supports the benefits of small and private spaces to which children can retreat when they feel tired, overwhelmed or unhappy (e.g., Kirby 1988; Lowry 1993). We know, furthermore, that some aspects of the architecturally designed environment influence important indicators of early childhood development. For instance, from our own previous research, we know that architecturally well-defined small-group activity spaces in early childhood centers are related to greater incidences of developmentally oriented cognitive and social activities (Moore 1986) nd that modified open-plan centers, in contrast to either open-plan or closed-plan classroom facilities, contribute further to cognitive and social developmental activities (Moore 1987). Regarding outdoor spaces, the design of play areas has also been found to have a bearing on children’s development by facilitating or inhibiting particular sets of behaviors (Barbour 1999). For instance, adventure-type playgrounds have been found to be associated with more cognitive play and neighborhood play settings with more social play than traditional “playgrounds” (Moore, Burger and Katz 1979). Natural elements such as plants in outdoor play areas are also known to be beneficial for child development (Herrington and Studtmann 1998). Because of this research, some texts, like the third edition of Dodge and Colker’s (1996) The Creative Curriculum, now have chapters that address the physical environment. Dodge and Colker, in particular, have an extensive section on “interest areas” including suggestions for arranging the environment, creating spaces, and assessing the effectiveness of the area—all in the service of early childhood development and education. This is a giant leap forward in the practical educator-oriented literature from previous decades. A small number of books have more recently been published for early childhood educators, planners, and designers that are devoted to the quality of the planned and designed physical environment of early childhood facilities. They include Greenman’s Places for Childhoods (1998) and Caring Spaces, Learning Places (2005), Olds’ Child Care Design Guide (2001), and our own Recommendations for Child Care Centers (Moore et al. 1994; see Moore, Friendly and Rubin 1995 for the DVD/video version). The physical environment seems finally to have come of age in child development and early childhood education. However, what about its assessment? Other than informally walking about and looking at environments vis-à-vis what is known from the literature and these newer texts and design guides, is there any way to systematically assess the quality of the physical environment of facilities like child care centers, preschools and kindergartens? How do we assess the quality of the physical, designed environment to know if it is appropriate for the activities it is intended to house, stimulate, and nurture? How do we know if it is appropriate for
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facilitating childhood development and early childhood education? As mentioned, one somewhat recent text devotes several pages to assessing the effectiveness of particular areas (Dodge and Colker 1996), but is limited to questions like “How often is the block corner used?” “Have I made the area appealing and inviting?” and so on, without offering any specifics about what defines an “appropriate,” “appealing,” or “inviting” block-playing environment, i.e., without operationalizing the variables so they can be assessed in any empirical or even qualitative systematic way. Can we do better than this? Existing Early Childhood Scales: Review and Lessons A variety of scales exist for measuring aspects of the childcare and early childhood experience, and some are widely used in the English-speaking world. Examples include the NAEYC Accreditation Procedures (NAEYC 1986), the Early Childhood Assessment Profiles (Abbott-Shim and Sibley 1992), Caldwell’s HOME Observation for Measurement of the Environment (Caldwell and Bradley 1984), the Purdue Home Stimulation Inventory (Wachs 1990), and Trickett and Moos’ Classroom Environment Scale (Trickett and Moos 1995). The best known and most widely used of these are the Infant/Toddler Childhood Environment Rating Scales (ITERS; Harms, Cryer, and Clifford 1990) and the original and revised editions of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales (ECERS-R; Harms, Clifford and Cryer 1998). This family of scales is used throughout much of the Western world for assessing the quality of the curriculum, staffing, and other important aspects of early childhood care. A systematic review of these instruments (Moore 1994) showed that most of these scales have moderate reliability and validity, with the ECERS family being the most statistically reliable and valid. More importantly for the current discussion, however, our review found that none, including the ITERS and ECERS-R, is focused on the physical, designed environment. For example, content analysis of ITERS revealed that out of 396 items (descriptors) used in the scale, only 8.8 percent pertain to the physical, designed environment. The vast majority pertain to very important aspects of the overall “environment” of any child care center, like the curriculum, staff interactions, educational materials on hand, and the like, i.e., the social or educational environment. However, despite the literature now showing the importance of the physical and designed environment to early childhood development and education, scant few items on this important instrument pertain to the physical environment. The purpose of our program of research, therefore, has been to develop and test a new instrument specifically focused on the assessment of the physical environment of childcare and other early childhood educational environments.
CPERS: Theory, Conceptualization, Organization, and Use Theory and Conceptualization CPERS is based on an interactional-constructivist theory of child development and the environment, together with the findings from the studies noted above and
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others, and on a comprehensive, empirically based design guide revised and updated several times for the planning and design of early childhood facilities (Moore et al. 1994). Major developmental theories, like those of Piaget (1963) and Werner (1949), stress that the interaction of the child with his or her environment is the fundamental basis of development. Piaget refers to this as the aliment, or "food for thought." Piaget’s theory is an active theory, in that is assumes the child to be an active being, interacting, exploring, discovering. Children need, therefore, to play and learn in environments that are rich in resources, and to explore, test, and learn from feedback on their own actions in a resource-rich environment. The richer the environment, and the more freedom the child has to explore, to make mistakes, and to learn from those mistakes, the more developmentally appropriate is that environment (Moore 1987). The interactional-constructivist theory of child development and the environment (Moore 1976; 1987; cf. 1997 Figure 11) highlights the active role of the child in interaction with aliment from the environment. It also highlights the dynamic interactions between the child, groups of children, caregivers/teachers, curriculum, and the physical environment. Children’s development (dependent developmental variables) is thus seen as a dynamic interaction between the child, characteristics of the architectural or designed environment (independent physical environmental variables), and characteristics of other people, the curriculum, etc. (moderating social environmental variables). Furthermore, children also actively construct their images of the environment and the rest of the world around them. Far from being something that is given passively to the child, as asserted in the older, simple camera analogy of “learning” theories, and far from being innate, what the child takes to be the world is constructed by the child in the context of his or her ongoing interactions with the environment (see, for example, Piaget 1967). In distinction to earlier approaches in developmental psychology and early childhood education, it is now clear that the total environment, including the physical designed environment, has a measurable impact on cognitive, social, and emotional development. This theory, therefore, intentionally crosses social and physical factors in development explanations for observed trends in development. The theory suggests—and available data from the research literature supports—that it is necessary to understand the effects of both social and physical factors as independent effects, as well as the interaction between the two, in order to understand early childhood development more comprehensively. In this approach, the child is no longer seen as a passive being to be bombarded with stimuli; on the contrary, the child is an agent in his or her own development who uses the physical environment as an important medium for interaction. It is through this dynamic series of interactions with the total environment, and through the interaction of the physical qualities of the environment with the social qualities of other people (e.g., caregivers, teachers, as well as the curriculum, etc.), and from feedback from the child’s own actions in this milieu, that development occurs.
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As argued earlier, this theory is both explanatory and normative (Moore 1997). That is, the interactional-constructivist theory of child development and the environment helps us to understand the dynamic interactions of the child with his or her world, but it also provides a type of springboard for environmental interventions through planning and design. Let us consider a brief example. We know from our previous research (Moore 1987) that the development of exploratory behavior and of social cooperation skills are both a function of and may be explained by the interaction of attributes of the physical environment (e.g., modified open-plan child care centers) in interaction with attributes of the socioorganizational environment (e.g., child-centered teaching styles). The theory, taken together with this evidence, allows us to extrapolate how policy, planning, or design changes in the physical environment (e.g., changing a closed-plan facility or a totally open-plan facility into a modified-open plan center) in interaction with changes in the socio-organizational environment (e.g., changing from curriculumcentered to more child-centered teaching approaches), would be expected to lead to greater opportunities for development. Following from this theory and evidence, we have conceptualized the physical environment of early childhood centers into several parts, each of which may be evaluated independently. Figure 1 illustrates the way that the functions of an ideal early childhood center may be conceptualized and spatially grouped together. Some buildings may or may not have all these functions, and some areas may be used to perform several related functions. Figure 1. Diagram of the “concept” or conceptual organization of an early childhood educational facility
Activity Areas
Play Yard
Home Base Module Building
Common Core
Module Home Base
Site
Activity Areas
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Many of the best early childhood educational facilities are divided into what we have termed the common core surrounded by one or more modules (Moore, Lane, Hill, Cohen and McGinty 1994; Moore, Friendly and Rubin 1995). The common core is collection of shared facilities that are more adult-oriented, usually including a reception area, administrative offices, staff lounge, meeting rooms, adults’ toilets, kitchen, laundry, multipurpose area (gym), and storage. Each module refers to a set of somewhat physically and functionally separate spaces for groups of children. Smaller child care centers may have just one or two modules; others may have— and the evidence would suggest, should have—a larger number so that the group size is kept to a minimum. The modules may be interconnected, semi-detached, or entirely freestanding buildings on the same site. Sometimes they are called “houses,” “wings” or “pods.” The modules may be further divided into what we have called a home base adjacent to or surrounded by a variety of resource-rich activity spaces (Moore et al. 1994; 1995). The home base provides functions related to children’s basic needs— the “caring” functions of eating, sleeping and toileting, diaper changing for infants and young toddlers, and storing personal belongings. The resource-rich activity areas provide architecturally well-defined spaces for small groups of children to be engaged in each educationally related activity, such as age- and curriculumdependent creative, social, and physical activities. The activity areas include display, storage, and use space for all the learning resources needed for each activity. These spaces operationalize the findings that small is better, and that architecturally well-defined spaces lead to greater incidences of developmentally appropriate behaviors. Organization of the CPERS Scale Following from this conceptualization, the CPERS scale is divided into four parts. Part A (Planning) focuses on the overall planning of an early childhood educational facility, including its size and capacity. Part B (Building as a Whole) is concerned with the quality of the building as a whole, including such issues as overall organization, image, circulation, and security. Part C (Indoor Activity Spaces) assesses each module, the rooms, and other spaces in which children spend most of their time. Part D (Outdoor Spaces) evaluates the outdoor activity areas around the building, its play yards, and surrounding conditions. Each section of the scale consists of several subscales, each comprised of a number of items or descriptors of the construct embodied in the subscale; i.e., the scale items operationalize each construct in empirically measurable terms. After detailed item analysis and two earlier pilot studies of reliability (Moore, Hayata and Sivakumaran 1997; 1999), we reduced CPERS to 124 items organized into 14 subscales. (The number of items in each subscale is shown in parentheses): Part A. Planning 1. Center Size and Modules (6) Part B. Building as a Whole 2. Image and Scale (6)
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3. Circulation (6) 4. Common Core of Shared Facilities (12) 5. Indoor Environmental Quality (8) 6. Safety and Security (6) Part C. Indoor Activity Spaces 7. Modified Open-Plan Space (6) 8. Home Bases (7) 9. Quiet Activity Areas (14) 10. Physical Activity Areas (14) 11. Messy Activity Areas (13) Part D. Outdoor Spaces 12. Play Yards: Functional Needs (7) 13. Play Yards: Developmental Needs (8) 14. Location and Site (11) Use of the CPERS Scale To assess an early childhood education center using CPERS, an assessor would indicate how well the center satisfies the criterion items in each subscale. The response format for each item is a 5-point linear numeric scale ranging from “Not Met” (score of 0) to “Fully Met” (4). In some items concerned with the existence or not of particular functional spaces, the rater is asked to choose from “No” (0), “Shared” with other functions (2) and “Yes” (4). The responses also include the possibility of “Not Applicable” for the case where items may not pertain to a particular center under assessment. Figures 2, 3 and 4 show examples of items in two sub-scales. Figure 2. Sample CPERS items for Subscale 2, assessing the appropriateness of the image and scale of early childhood education facilities Not Met
2.1 The exterior of the center appears non-institutional and welcoming (e.g., single-story, pitched roofs, verandas, use of wood, brick and stone not concrete blocks or large expanses of glass, etc.). 2.2 Children can see some indoor children’s activity areas from outside before entering the center (e.g., windows between inside and outside along the entrance path, etc.). 2.3 The scale of the interior appears small and cozy (e.g., low ceilings, low-hanging lights, low windows that children can see through, low openings between adjoining spaces, etc.). 2.4 The interior finishes appear welcoming and natural (e.g., use of carpets, warm colors, soft lighting, curtains, etc.). 2.5 Furniture is child height (e.g., bookcases, display shelves, tables, chairs, etc.). 2.6 Toilets, basins and mirrors used by children are child-height.
Fully Met N/A
0
1
2
3
4
0
1
2
3
4
0
1
2
3
4
0
1
2
3
4
0
1
2
3
4
0
1
2
3
4
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Figure 3. CPERS subscale from Subscale 10 for assessing the environmental quality of small toy and large block play areas No 10.1 10.2 10.3
The center or module has a physical play area for infants (e.g., toys, crawling levels, etc.). The center/module has a toy and large block play area for toddlers. The center/module has at least one toy and large block play area for preschoolers.
Shared
Yes
0
2
4
0
2
4
0
2
4
Not Met 10.4 10.5 10.6
The physical play area has a sufficient amount of space for 2-5 children and 1 adult. The physical play area is spatially separated from other play areas. Toy and large block play areas have appropriate furnishings and storage (e.g., flat child-height work surfaces, storage shelves, display racks, etc).
Fully Met
N/A
0
1
2
3
4
□
0
1
2
3
4
□
0
1
2
3
4
□
Figure 4. CPERS subscale from Subscale 10 for assessing the environmental quality of music areas 10.7 10.8 10.9
The center (or module being evaluated) has a music area for infants. The center or module has a music area for toddlers. The center or module has a music area for preschoolers.
No
Shared
Yes
0
2
4
0
2
4
0
2
4
Not Met 10.10 The music area is separated spatially and acoustically from other activity areas (e.g., partitions, partial acoustic panels, partial walls, heavy curtains, etc). 10.11 The music area has appropriate furnishings and storage (e.g., open display shelves for instruments, etc).
Fully Met
N/A
0
1
2
3
4
□
0
1
2
3
4
□
After an assessor completes the entire scale for a center, each subscale score is calculated as an arithmetic mean of the items in that subscale. The total score for the center is then a grand arithmetic mean of all the subscale scores. The procedure is shown in Figure 5.
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Figure 5. The CPERS scoring system Subscale
Subscale Score
PART A 1. Center Size and Modules PART B 2. Image and Scale 3. Circulation 4. Common Core of Shared Facilities 5. Indoor Environmental Quality 6. Safety and Security PART C 7. Modified Open-Plan Space 8. Home Bases 9a. Quiet Activity Areas 9b. Physical Activity Areas 9c. Messy Activity Areas
1
Modules 2
Average 3
PART D 10a. Play Yards: Functional Need 10b. Play Yards: Developmental Need 11. Location and Site SUMMARY SCORE =
Sum of subscalescores 14
=
Development and Refinement through Multiple Phases of Testing and Revision The subscales and items which comprise CPERS were developed and refined by validating them against the latest research in the field, cross-instrument review, and checking their validity and reliability in the field through the Alreck and Settle (1995) iterative model of development, field-testing and further refinement.
First, all tentative items for each subscale were examined empirically through two preliminary phases of reliability and validity testing, refinement through iterative analysis and feedback based on the field testing, and further testing, analysis, modification, and refinement. During the process of testing, items that were difficult to understand or equivocal were either modified or removed. We conducted the first phase of preliminary testing in the north central U.S. (reported in Moore, Hayata and Sivakumaran 1997; 1999). More recently, we conducted the second phase and final phases of reliability and validity in Australia and New Zealand (see preliminary conference report on two parts of the validity testing in
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Moore, Sugiyama and O’Donnell 2003; Sugiyama and Moore 2005). These are reported in detail below, including the first reports on the reliability testing. A reliable scale is one where assessments using the scale do not vary significantly between different users of the scale (inter-rater reliability) and between different times (test-retest reliability). Since we designed CPERS to be used by many different types of people (e.g., center staff, managers, policy makers, architects, researchers, etc.) who are likely to be different in their experience and knowledge about early childhood programs and centers, it is important that the scale produce similar results regardless of the raters or their backgrounds. Test-retest reliability is also relevant because many early childhood education centers change their environments in minor ways from time to time (e.g., arrangement of furniture, partitions, arrangement of learning resources) to accommodate different educational activities. The scale needs to be immune to such minor changes and provide consistent results between different occasions. A valid scale is one that measures what it is intended to measure—in this case the quality of the physical environment—and is not confounded by other things. In our studies, we assessed validity in two ways. Content validity is the extent to which a test or measure provides an adequate representation of the conceptual domain it is designed to cover, i.e., the degree to which experts judge the content of the items relevant to quality of child care and early childhood education settings. Construct validity is the degree to which the sub-scales and scale as a whole are good measures of the quality of the physical, designed environment of early childhood centers. To determine construct validity, we analyzed the degree to which different sets of criteria for assessing the physical environment of a center (assessment by CPERS versus by expert judgment) produced similar results. The purpose of the remainder of this paper is to present new data and provide a summary of all results of this series of reliability and validity studies.
Reliability Testing: Methods and Results
The reliability studies involved extensive field-testing in a variety of early childhood educational settings in Australia to assess the internal consistency as well as the inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities of CPERS. Inter-Rater Reliability Method To examine the inter-rater reliability of CPERS, a study was conducted of 46 early childhood development centers in Sydney, the largest and most multi-cultural city in Australasia (4.8 million people; 128 different ethnic groups). We identified the centers through a Delphi technique. First, the principal investigator and senior author with a research assistant identified well-known centers in the Sydney metropolitan area. We also consulted experts in the area. We sent back an extensive draft list of centers to the panel of experts for their advice. From those most highly recommended (not as the “best” or “worst” centers, but simply as being well known and typical for their areas), a final draft list of centers was
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compiled. The research assistant then contacted each of the centers to see if they would be willing to be involved in the study. The final list of 46 centers was therefore not randomly drawn from the city, but may be considered representative of the diversity of centers in the city. Each center was assessed by two of seven raters through several cycles of fieldtesting between November 2002 and April 2003. At each center, two raters made simultaneous but independent assessments of the center and its various indoor and outdoor spaces using a draft version of the CPERS scale. The final cycle of interrater reliability testing involved a pair of untrained raters with different backgrounds, which is a tougher test than using trained raters with similar backgrounds. All raters were hired part-time research assistants chosen from advanced undergraduate or master’s students at the University of Sydney. We considered them appropriate as they were comparable in educational level, etc., to childcare center directors and regulators whom it is thought will be the primary users of the final scale. We analyzed the data using two different statistics: degree of agreement between two raters for each item, and Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficient G for each subscale to evaluate dependability of measurements considering multiple sources of measurement error (Shavelson, Webb and Rowley 1989; Strube 2000). With regard to the agreement between two raters, exact match and agreement within one point were counted as “agreement” following previous studies by Clifford et al. (1989) and Harms, Clifford and Cryer (1998). Cronbach’s G coefficient was calculated for each subscale as shown in Equation 1: G
=
VT
(1)
VX where VT refers to the true variance of a score, while VX is the total variance (including error variance) of the score. In the inter-rater reliability analysis, VT is the variance across centers, which is the variance to be measured correctly. VX is the sum of VT and the error variance that contains the variance from raters and that from the interaction between centers and raters. Results The inter-rater reliability analyses indicated a very high degree of agreement and generalizability. Table 1 summarizes the percentage of items in agreement or in disagreement along with Cronbach’s G for each subscale. Figure 6 shows the number of items according to the percentage of inter-rater agreement across 46 centers examined for inter-rater reliability.
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Table 1. Inter-rater reliability among seven raters across 46 centers (percentage agreement and Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficient G)
Subscales
Inter-Rater Reliability Agreement Disagreement within 1 point by 3 or 4 (and exact points agreement)
N
Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficient G
Subscale 1*
78% (37%)
7%
27
0.73
Subscale 2
92% (61%)
3%
155
0.86
Subscale 3
73% (42%)
10%
96
0.89
Subscale 4
86% (56%)
2%
309
0.93
Subscale 5
85% (50%)
4%
206
0.89
Subscale 6
76% (47%)
12%
119
0.93
Subscale 7
79% (38%)
6%
144
0.78
Subscale 8
80% (43%)
9%
164
0.88
Subscale 9*
92% (63%)
0%
103
0.77
Subscale 10*
88% (64%)
5%
98
0.74
Subscale 11*
93% (76%)
0%
70
0.89
Subscale 12
85% (48%)
5%
155
0.81
Subscale 13
82% (44%)
2%
208
0.94
Subscale 14
87% (44%)
2%
285
0.96
Total CPERS
84% (50%)
4%
2139
0.89
ITERS**
78% (47%)
—
1002
—
ECERS-R*** 71% (48%) — — — * Due to improving the wording of items between the fourth and fifth cycles of inter-rater reliability testing, it was not possible to combine results across all trials. Therefore, the results from only the fifth trial are shown for these subscales. ** ITERS has 35 items. Inter-rater reliability was conducted on 30 centers. *** ECERS-R has 43 items. Inter-rater reliability was conducted on 21 centers.
As seen in the second column of Table 1, the percentage of cases where two raters agreed within one point ranged from 73 percent to 93 percent (84 percent for the scale as a whole). The third column shows that the percentage of disagreement was very low, ranging from 0 percent to 12 percent of the items in each sub-scale. Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficient G, the right-hand column, was very high, ranging from 0.73 to 0.96, with a score of 0.89 for the scale as a whole. Reliability coefficients are generally considered acceptable if they are above 0.80 (Nunnally and Bernstein 1994). These results signify that the error variance attributed to the difference between raters is very small compared to the true variance attributed to the difference between centers.
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Figure 6. Number of items according to the percentage of inter-rater agreement (exact agreement and within 1 point – left) and disagreement (3 or 4 points difference – right) across 46 centers in Australia and New Zealand
Figure 6 illustrates that on 87 items (about three quarters of all items) two raters agreed on more than 80 percent of ratings. Although no criterion on appropriate levels of agreement between raters exists in the literature, the figure suggests that different combinations of raters produced a high degree of agreement with only occasional disagreement. In sum, as shown in the last three rows of Table 1, the results on inter-rater reliability (the percentage of items in which untrained raters agreed within one point) are equivalent to or better than the results reported for the well known ITERS (Clifford et al. 1989) and ECERS-R (Harms, Clifford and Cryer 1998) scales, which are widely used as reliable instruments by researchers and practitioners around at the English-speaking world. Overall, these results demonstrate that CPERS has a very acceptable level of interrater reliability for both research and general use. Test-Retest Reliability Method To examine the extent to which scores of CPERS items were stable across time of measurement, we conducted a study on 11 centers, each of which was assessed and then reassessed three to five weeks later between February and April 2003. We employed the same two statistics as in the inter-rater reliability analyses. In the calculation of Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficients, the error variances consisted of the variance from time of measurement and from the interaction between center and time of measurement.
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Results The results indicated high test-retest reliability for the scale. As seen from Table 2, the percentage of cases in which the initial and second score agreed within one point ranged from 78 percent to 98 percent (with a very high 91 percent for the whole scale). Disagreement between two assessments was found only in nine subscales with a very low average of 3 percent of all items. The Generalizability Coefficient G was again very high, ranging from 0.66 to 0.99 with the score of 0.97 for the scale as a whole. Table 2. Test-retest reliability over a three- to five-week period across 11 centers (percentage of agreement and Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficient G)
Subscales
Test-Retest Reliability Exact Disagreement agreement and by 3 or 4 agreement points within 1 point
N
Cronbach’s Generalizability Coefficient G
Subscale 1
93% (52%)
4%
27
0.92
Subscale 2
92% (64%)
0%
66
0.66
Subscale 3
83% (46%)
10%
48
0.83
Subscale 4
96% (58%)
1%
142
0.99
Subscale 5
92% (64%)
0%
87
0.82
Subscale 6
90% (62%)
4%
69
0.93
Subscale 7
98% (62%)
0%
66
0.90
Subscale 8
96% (63%)
3%
74
0.90
Subscale 9a
78% (45%)
12%
101
0.85
Subscale 9b
81% (57%)
9%
110
0.95
Subscale 9c
83% (58%)
8%
78
0.81
Subscale 10a
95% (61%)
2%
66
0.91
Subscale 10b
95% (57%)
0%
88
0.98
Subscale 11
95% (58%)
0%
110
0.95
91% (58%)
3%
1130
0.97
Total CPERS
Figure 7 illustrates that in about three-quarters of the items in the scale, two raters agreed on 80 percent of the total number of items. Overall, these results indicate a very high consistency between initial test and subsequent retest assessments three to five weeks later. They thus indicate a very acceptable level of test-retest reliability for both research and general use.
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Figure 7. The number of items according to the percentage of test-retest agreement (exact agreement and within 1 point – left) and disagreement (3 or 4 points difference – right) across 11 Australian centers
Internal Consistency Method We used the data obtained in the final cycle of inter-rater reliability testing to assess the internal consistency of each of the subscales in CPERS. This cycle involved two untrained raters simultaneously but independently assessing 11 centers in Australia. “Untrained” raters were used, as they would be most similar to center directors who might use the scale to assess their own center, i.e., “untrained” did not mean untrained in child development or early childhood education, but untrained in the use of and previously unfamiliar with the scale. We calculated Cronbach’s alpha for the items within each subscale. Results Table 3 shows the internal consistency of each subscale. Cronbach’s alphas were generally well above the benchmark of 0.7. Except for one subscale (#12), the value of Cronbach’s alpha (0.71-0.96) was equal to or greater than that of the wellknown ECERS-R scale (Harms, Clifford and Cryer 1998). The subscale 12, “Play Yards: Functional Needs,” showed lower internal consistency. Potential reasons for this might be that this particular subscale includes a wider range of issues (in comparison to other subscales) concerning the requirement for outdoor play areas such as shade, ground surface, gradient, and storage, which may not be as highly associated with each other.
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Table 3. Internal consistency of items within each subscale and for CPERS as a whole (Cronbach’s alpha)
Subscale
Internal Number of consistency items in each Cronbach’s subscale alpha
Subscale 1
3
0.88
Subscale 2
6
0.79
Subscale 3
6
0.96
Subscale 4
12
0.87
Subscale 5
8
0.71
Subscale 6
6
0.88
Subscale 7
6
0.88
Subscale 8*
7
0.84
Subscale 12
6
0.53
Subscale 13
8
0.87
Subscale 14
11
0.90
CPERS
—
0.53-0.96
ECERS-R
—
0.71-0.88
* The reader will note that Subscales 9-11 are not included in the internal consistency analyses. These subscales evaluate a wide range of quiet, physical, and messy activity areas, some of which were not present at many centers in this study. This resulted in considerable missing data (NAs), which we deleted casewise. Since a considerable number of items were deleted, it was not appropriate to calculate Cronbach’s alphas for those subscales (Tabachnick and Fidell 1996).
Despite this one anomaly, taken together, the results demonstrate that CPERS has a very high internal consistency and is highly reliable in terms of both inter-rater and test-retest reliability.
Validity Testing: Methods and Results
The validity studies involved extensive field-testing in a variety of early childhood educational settings across Australia and New Zealand to assess both the content and construct validity of CPERS. Content Validity Method To confirm whether the set of items included in the first and later iterations of CPERS accurately represented developmentally appropriate environments, we conducted a study (reported previously in Sugiyama and Moore 2005) using a panel of 12 leading experts from diverse parts of Australia, all highly respected for their
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knowledge of early childhood educational programs and facilities. We used a Delphi technique to select the panel by successive networking among experts in the field. First, a group of ten experts known to the researchers was invited to nominate the leading experts in the country from the academic and professional communities, people with considerable experience and expertise on the quality of early childhood facilities. The experts were then invited to nominate who they thought were the leading experts in the country, and so on for three successive rounds. By the end of the third round of nominations, by which time many of the first or second round experts were re-nominated by others, a group of 12 experts emerged as being the consensus experts in the field in Australasia. The final group of 12 included four architects, three center directors, three childcare center regulators, and two early childhood researchers. We invited this panel of 12 experts to assess the initial 151 items in CPERS. Each expert independently evaluated each item in CPERS in terms of their expert opinion about the importance of that item to early childhood development and education. It was suggested that an item be deemed important if it were considered relevant to the physical, cognitive, or social development of children or to the safety, security, and well-being of children and staff. The response format was a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from “Not Important” (0) to “Very Important” (4). Results The results from the experts’ assessment indicated a very high degree of expert support for the subscales and for the individual items in CPERS. As reported previously (Sugiyama and Moore 2005) and summarized in Table 4, frequencies for score 3 and 4 (“Important” and “Very Important”) accounted for 78.0 percent of the total number of responses (or 80.4 percent if one outlier is excluded). This is comparable to the results Clifford and colleagues reported on their validity test of ITERS (Clifford et al. 1989), shown in the last column of Table 4. In fact, the raters of CPERS rated considerably more of the items of CPERS as “Very Important” than did the earlier raters of the ECERS family of scales (60.2 percent versus 48.5 percent, i.e., the items of CPERS were over 10 points higher in terms of being “Very Important” for early childhood development and education). We have recently conducted a further analysis of content validity. Table 5 shows the results of the distribution of average ratings of each item across the 12 experts. This table shows that slightly more than 40 percent of the total items in CPERS were considered “Very Important” as a mean score from the experts, receiving the highest possible ratings between 3.5 and 4. Another half of the items were regarded as “Important,” with an average score between 2.5 and 3.5. These two categories occupied 93.4 percent of the total items (after excluding the outlier). The combined results of these two statistical analyses of content validity testing indicate that experts in early childhood education considered items in the CPERS scale to be highly relevant to the development and well-being of children and staff.
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Table 4. Content validity—frequency of expert ratings of scale items being important for early childhood development for CPERS versus ITERS
Number of responses Percent given
Expert response
Valid percent
Number of responses without outlier*
CPERS valid percent without outlier
ITERS by Clifford et al. (1989)
0 very unimportant
90
5.0
5.2
20
1.2
0.6
1 unimportant
57
3.1
3.3
57
3.6
2.3
2 neutral
235
13.0
13.5
235
14.8
10.9
3 important
310
17.1
17.8
310
19.5
37.7
1049
57.9
60.2
969
60.9
48.5
71
3.9
NA
70
NA
NA
1812
100.0
100.0
1661
100.0
100.0
4 very important No response Total *
The vast majority of cases of “0, very unimportant” (70 out of 90) were from just one rater. It is suggested that this rater had markedly different opinions about the significance of the physical environment in early childhood centers. Considering that the other expert raters scored "0" less than twice per rater, it is considered legitimate in the statistics literature to regard this rater as an outlier (Hair et al. 1998; Tabachnick and Fidell 1996).
Table 5. Content validity—distribution of average rating of scale items being important for early childhood development Range of experts’ average scores
Number of items
Percent
Number without outlier
Percent without outlier
0.0 – 0.5
0
0.0
0
0.0
0.5 – 1.0
0
0.0
0
0.0
1.0 – 1.5
0
0.0
0
0.0
1.5 – 2.0
4
2.6
2
1.3
2.0 – 2.5
10
6.6
8
5.3
*
34
22.5
21
13.9
*
3.0 – 3.5
40
26.5
55
36.4
3.5 – 4.0**
63
41.7
65
43.1
151
100.0
151
100.0
2.5 – 3.0
Total * **
An average score between 2.5 and 3.5 meant “Important.” An average score above 3.5 meant “Very Important.”
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Construct Validity Method Following the precedent of validity testing for the ECERS family of scales, using convergent evidence (Clifford et al. 1989), we conducted a study of the agreement between experts’ assessments of centers using different sets of criteria as the prime measure of construct validity. For this construct validity study, we contacted a second panel of 13 experts highly knowledgeable about early childhood educational facilities in Australia and New Zealand (different from the experts used in content validity testing). They included six researchers in early childhood education, six professional educators involved in the education and management of early childhood centers, and one internationally highly experienced architect in the design of educational facilities. We asked this panel of experts to assess independently a variety of centers in three ways. In Part I, each expert was asked to do a detailed site visit of a designated well-known center in their region of the country and to make an overall evaluation of the physical environment of the center based solely on his or her knowledge and experience, i.e., we did not lead nor constrain them in any way. The response format was a simple 9-point linear numeric scale ranging from “Very Poor Design for Children” (0) to “Excellent Design for Children” (4) (using whole numbers and halfway points in between). In Part II, each expert subsequently evaluated the same center using 13 single-item criteria, each one corresponding to one of the then 13 subscales of CPERS,i each on a 5-point numeric scale. Finally, in Part III, each expert was asked to use the full draft CPERS instrument (at that time, 13 subscales and 142 items) to assess the same center. In order to insure independence of the three assessments, judges were instructed not to advance to the next part until they had completed the earlier part and sealed it away in a separate envelope. In Parts II and III, we calculated the overall score as a mean of the subscale scores. Results The results showed very high agreement among the experts on the three separate assessments, as shown in Figure 8. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between the overall scores obtained from Parts I and II was 0.89 (p < .01), and from Parts I and III was 0.85 (p < .01). The strong and significant correlation between Parts I and II confirms that the 14 constructs included in CPERS as subscales represent the overall quality of childcare centers with regard to children’s development very well. Furthermore, the strong and significant correlation between Parts I and III means that the items in CPERS as a whole can measure the quality of the physical environment very well relative to a range of experts’ assessments.
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Figure 8. Scatter diagrams of experts’ overall evaluations: Left – overall evaluation (Part I) versus average score of 144 subscales (Part II). Right – overall evaluation (Part I) versus total score using the full 124-item CPERS scale (Part III).
Thus, in summary, using the three-way construct assessment method developed in this study, significantly high agreements were found among different assessment procedures by a range of international experts. The results indicate that the scale, the subscales, and items in the subscales accurately represent developmentally appropriate and salient physical characteristics of early childhood educational environments; that is, the scale as a whole has very acceptable levels of content and construct validity for both research and general use.
Conclusion
This program of research has found that CPERS has very high and significant interrater and test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and content and construct validity. The results indicate that using the new scale, different raters do not differ in any appreciable way in their assessment of early childhood educational facilities, and that over time, the same raters do not change their assessments in any appreciable way. The results also indicate a high degree of cross-expert support for the 14 major constructs or subscales and for the vast majority of items in the scale as a whole. Furthermore, the assessments of a number of childcare centers using the scale agree with experts’ opinions on the quality of the physical environment of these centers. The psychometric properties of CPERS are thus found to be comparable to and in several cases better than other well-known scales on early childhood education programs such as ITERS and ECERS-R. As was suggested in the introduction, the scale can be used for a variety of purposes, including post-occupancy evaluation, research, policy guidance, and a shorthand design guide for new early childhood educational facilities or the modification of existing centers. One strength of this measurement tool is its ability to pinpoint faults in postconstruction or post-occupancy situations. The scale can be used as a powerful tool
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for the post-occupancy evaluation of early childhood development and education centers. Such POEs could lead to programs or briefs for minor design interventions or major renovations. Another strength of the scale—given its high reliability and validity—is for research on early childhood development settings worldwide.ii A variety of research questions can be investigated using the scale—essentially any research question where operationalization of independent environmental constructs and variables is important to the research design. The scale can also be used to provide systematic evaluative information for policy makers, regulators, center managers, childhood educators, architects, and even parents. The ECERS family of scales is already used by policy makers, regulators, and center managers to assess the overall quality of childcare provided, and to recommend licensing, corrective interventions, and the like. However, as noted in the introduction, none of the existing scales of childcare environments, including the ECERS family of scales, focuses on the quality of the physical, designed environment. CPERS, therefore, can be a supplementary tool proving much-needed information on the quality of a building and its various spaces and including outdoor play areas, all vis-à-vis child developmental and educational principles. Likewise, CPERS has already been used by center directors to assess the quality of the physical environment of their centers, a step toward continuous quality improvement. A simplified version of CPERS could also be used by childcare advocacy groups, or even individual parents in the form of a small checklist brochure, to assess the quality of centers in their area prior to making an informed decision on which center is best for enrolling their children. The final purpose suggested in the introduction was as a type of “shorthand design guide.” This latter point may seem controversial—“How can a scale,” one might ask, “be used as a design guide?” It might be argued that given the complexity of other forces that shape the creation of early childcare facilities—regulatory, economic, and cultural—this rating scale would be inadequate. It is true that most rating scales in the environmental social sciences could not be used as design guides. For example, there is no way the Russell and Mehrabian’s PAD scale (1977; Russell and Pratt 1980; cf. Russell 2003)—which measures emotional responses to environments—could be used as a design guide. That is because the items in that scale do not measure environmental characteristics, and were never meant to do so. However, the CPERS scale, which explicitly includes a large number of descriptors of good environmental design for children, can be used by center directors or architects as a type of thumbnail design guide. For example, if POEs were done on existing centers in an area using CPERS, and a summary obtained, the relative positive and negative results would indicate some of the most important design issues on which to focus in a newly designed center. However, even if a POE were not conducted, a parent group or the board of directors of a new center could use the scale to identify which physical environmental considerations they wanted the
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architect to include in the program or brief for the new building, and thus in the design of the building. Each of the 124 items of the scale describes one researchbased, specific, and easily interpreted design criterion to achieve in any developmentally oriented childcare, preschool, kindergarten or other early childhood education center. The 124 items thus suggest empirically based criteria around which a design program or brief may be based. Furthermore, the assessment scale can also be used by center directors, principals, parent groups and others to do a quick assessment of preliminary designs presented for such centers (called pre-occupancy evaluation, or simply, preliminary design evaluation), requesting changes as appropriate to the designs before final documentation and construction. In summary, the results of extensive field tests in Australia and New Zealand have confirmed earlier field test results from the U.S., showing the inter-rater and testretest reliability, internal consistency, and content and construct validity of CPERS. This program of research demonstrates that the new Children’s Physical Environment Rating Scale is reliable and valid for use in all of these applications. However, the story does not end there. A number of future research directions for improvement and extensions to the scale and for using the scale in broader child and youth environments research present themselves. For example, one anonymous reviewer suggested that given the critical role of teacher behaviors in early childhood education, it might be worth exploring if a subscale devoted to staff spaces could be formulated. We will consider this for a revised version of CPERS-R. Another anonymous reviewer suggested several additional methodological tests that could be conducted, including a confirmatory factor analysis to confirm or revise the subscale structure. Other research could include locating centers about to undergo significant renovation and conducting pre- and post-renovation CPERS scores, and examining CPERS in relation to socio-economic status (SES), as previous research has suggested this has a robust correlation to teaching characteristics (salaries, educational qualifications, etc.) and educational philosophies. The latter could be especially interesting. There is considerable evidence in other sub-fields of environment-behavior studies (for example, Evans and Lepore 1997; Gifford 2007) that considering moderating constructs in combination with physical environmental independent variables leads to stronger predictions of the dependent variables and greater overall understanding of the environment-behavior nexus, or, in this case, the child-environment nexus.
Endnotes i.
The draft CPERS had 13 subscales at the time of construct validity testing. Based on test results, we subsequently split the subscale on outdoor play areas into two subscales. ii. CPERS was tested in studies of early childhood development centers in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. It is also currently being used for research on the quality of childcare centers in Malaysia and consideration has been given to translating and adapting the scale for Japan and Korea. We have also received requests from researchers around the world wishing to use the scale in a variety of developmental
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psychology and early childhood education studies.
Acknowledgements
Our sincere thanks to Louise O’Donnell, Judith van der Linden, Shan Sivakumaran, Naohiko Hayata, Jodie Gaven, Femke Harten, Gerarda Nierman and Soo-Jin Lee for their assistance at various stages of this research. Our thanks also to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Sydney for their support, and to the Australian Research Council for funding the final stages of the research. Finally, our thanks to all the directors, staff, parents and especially the children of the various centers where this program of research was carried out in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
Gary T. Moore is Foundation Professor of Environment-Behaviour Studies, Editor of the Architectural Science Review, and Director of the Australia-China International Development Project at the University of Sydney, Australia. He holds a BArch (Hons) from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in developmental and Ph.D. in environmental psychology from Clark University. Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Health and Welfare Canada, the World Bank, and the Australian Research Council, he has conducted research on a variety of children, youth and environment and environment-behavior issues. He has published 10 books, 12 conference proceedings, and over 100 research papers. Currently he is completing The Built Environment for the 21st Century, being published by Springer. Takemi Sugiyama is Research Fellow at the School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Australia. He holds a BEng from Nagoya University, MArch from Virginia Polytechnic University, and a Ph.D. in environment-behavior studies from the University of Sydney. He contributed to the validation of the CPERS scale while he was post-doctoral fellow at the University of Sydney. He has recently moved to cancer prevention and public health, where he investigates the relationship between aspects of neighborhood environments and people’s physical activity patterns and has published widely on these themes.
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