Children’s performance on standardized cognitive tests also has been linked to concurrent process quality. Infants who attend centers with higher ITERS scores receive better scores on the Bayley Mental Development Inventory than infants in poorer quality centers (, 1996). Similarly, children who attend centers that have higher ECERS scores receive higher scores on the CBI intelligence scale (Dunn, 1993). The Cost, Quality, and Outcome Study reported that higher ECERS scores were associated with better scores on the reading subtest of the Woodcock-Johnson (Peisner-Feinberg and Burchinal, 1997).
Finally, process quality is related to children’s social and emotional functioning. High-quality care as measured by the ECERS is related to greater child interest and participation, whereas poorer process quality is associated with heightened behavior problems (Hausfather, Tohari, LaRoche, and Engelsmann, 1997; Peisner-Feinberg and Burchinal, 1997). The Bermuda Study (Phillips, McCartney, and Scarr, 1987) found higher ECERS scores to predict both caregiver and parent reports of children’s considerateness and sociability, and caregiver reports of children’s higher intelligence and task orientation and less anxiety.
Although the majority of studies (see Table 2) have reported significant relations between process measures of quality and concurrent child functioning, it should be noted that there are exceptions. Scarr and colleagues did not find relations between process quality and children’s social outcomes (McCartney et al., 1997). Measurement problems ple, observers were only moderately reliable on the measures of quality, with exact agreement of 5558 percent between sites on the ITERS/ECERS. Continue reading “Concurrent Associations between Structural and Caregiver Characteristics, and Child Outcomes”