24- AND 36-MONTH CODING SCALES FOR THE PARENT-CHILD AND FATHER-CHILD
SEMISTRUCTURED PLAY ASSESSMENTS

Child Scales

Engagement of Parent Reflects the extent to which the child shows, initiates, and/or maintains interaction with the parent. This may be expressed by approaching or orienting toward parent, establishing eye contact with parent, positively responding to parent’s initiations, positive affect directed to parent, and/or engaging parent in play.

Sustained Attention Measures the degree to which the child is involved with the toys presented in the three bags. Indicators include the degree to which child “focuses in” when playing with an object and the extent to which child coordinates activities with several objects and/or explores different aspects of a toy.

Negativity toward Parent Reflects the degree to which child shows anger, hostility, or dislike toward parent. Expressions may be overt (for example, forcefully rejecting a toy offered by parent or pushing parent away) or covert (for example, hitting or throwing an object in response to parent’s behavior).

Parent Scales

Sensitivity Measures the degree to which the parent observes and responds to the child’s cues (gestures, expressions, and signals) during times of distress as well as non-distress. Key features include being child-centered, “tuning in” to the child, manifesting an awareness of child’s needs, moods, interests, and capabilities, being flexible in supporting and responding to child’s emerging need for autonomy, control, independence, and mastery even while enforcing necessary rules, regulations, and constraints.

Positive Regard Assesses the parent’s expression of love, respect and/or admiration for the child. Key features include verbal praising of child’s efforts and successes, words of encouragement or support, and nonverbal affect, the way in which parent watches child attentively and looks into the child’s face.

Stimulation of Cognitive Development Measures the quality and quantity of the parent’s effortful teaching to enhance child’s perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic development. Key features include being aware of the child’s developmental level, efforts to bring the child above that level, flexibility and timing of instructions or explanations, and use of complex and varied language.

Detachment Measures the parent’s lack of awareness, attention, and engagement with the child. Key features include being inattentive, perfunctory, or cold when interacting with child or, at the higher levels, complete lack of attention to or interaction with child.

Intrusiveness Assesses the degree to which the parent exerts control over the child rather than acting in a way that recognizes and respects the validity of the child’s perspective. Intrusive interactions are clearly adult-centered rather than the child-centered and involve imposing the parent’s agenda on the child despite signals that a different activity, level or pace of interaction is needed.

Negative Regard Reflects the parent’s expression of discontent with, anger toward, disapproval of, and/or rejection of the child. This may be expressed verbally (words of derogation or disregard toward child) or physically (parental roughness, grabbing, or hitting child).

NOTE: Scales are assessed on a seven-point scale, “1” indicating a very low incidence of the behavior and “7” indicating a very high incidence of the behavior. The 24- and 36-month scales were adapted by Christy Brady-Smith, Rebecca Fauth, Claudia O’Brien, Lisa Berlin, and Anne M. Ware and were based on the “Early Head Start 14-month Child-Parent Interaction Rating Scales for the Three Bag Assessment” (Ware, Brady, O’Brien, and Berlin 1998), the NICHD Study of Early Child Care 15-, 24-, and 36-month ratings of Parent-Child Interaction, and the “Manual for Coding Freeplay - Parenting Styles from the Newark Observational Study of the Teenage Parent Demonstration” (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1992).

36-MONTH CODING SCALES FOR THE PARENT-CHILD AND FATHER-CHILD PUZZLE CHALLENGE ASSESSMENTS

Child Scales

Engagement of Parent Reflects the extent to which the child shows, initiates, and/or maintains interaction with the parent and communicates positive regard and/or positive affect to the parent.

Persistence Measures how goal-oriented, focused and motivated the child remains toward the puzzle throughout the task, even in the face of frustration or boredom. The focus of persistence is on the child’s apparent effort to solve the puzzle, not on how well the child performs.

Frustration with Task Measures the degree to which the child expresses frustration or anger toward the puzzle task. Expressions may be intense (for example, throwing the puzzle to the side or refusing to continue working on the puzzle) or subtle (for example, sighing, frowning, pushing a puzzle piece that will not fit).

Parent Scales

Supportive Presence Focuses on the parent’s emotional availability and physical and affective presence during the puzzle task. Supportive presence involves providing a secure base from which the child can explore, and displaying emotional support and enthusiasm toward the child and his or her autonomous work.

Quality of Assistance Measures the instrumental support and assistance the parent offers the child during the puzzle task. Specifically, quality of assistance is the extent to which the parent helps the child by scaffolding the task to bring the child above his/her level of understanding and ability, and helping the child to think analytically. Key features include illustrating general cause and effect relationships within the puzzle and its related parts, and stimulating the child’s perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic development, so that the child might be better able to solve a similar problem autonomously.

Intrusiveness Assesses the degree to which the parent controls the child rather than recognizing and respecting the validity of the child’s independent efforts to solve the puzzle. Intrusive interactions are clearly adult-centered rather than child-centered and undermine the child’s potential for understanding and solving the puzzles independently.

Detachment Measures the parent’s lack of awareness, attention, and engagement with the child. Key features include being inattentive, perfunctory, or cold when interacting with child or, at the higher levels, complete lack of attention to or interaction with child.

NOTE: Scales are assessed on a seven-point scale, “1” indicating a very low incidence of the behavior and “7” indicating a very high incidence of the behavior. The 36-month puzzle task scales were adapted by Christy Brady-Smith, Rebecca M. Ryan, Lisa J. Berlin, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Allison Sidle Fuligni. They are based on the “Manual for Coding the Puzzle Task” from the Newark Observational Study of the Teenage Parent Demonstration (TPD; Brooks-Gunn, Liaw, Michael, & Zamsky, 1992; Spiker, Ferguson, & Brooks-Gunn, 1993).

Source: Parent interviews, child assessments, interviewer observations, and assessments of parent-child semistructured play assessments conducted when children were approximately 24 months old, and Parent Services Interviews conducted approximately 15 months after enrollment.

aReliability was estimated using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha formula. (back)

bThe KIDI items we used were a subset of the 20 used by the IHDP study. Although the resulting summary score did not meet our .65 internal consistency reliability criterion, we included the score in the impact analysis because parent knowledge was a key outcome for many of the programs and these items have been used successfully in other studies with other samples. It is likely that our reduction of the number of items resulted in the reduced reliability.(back)

cA skip logic error in the version of the CIDI that we used prevented us from scoring the CIDI in the usual way. Based on the advice of the CIDI developer, we created 2 versions of the CIDI scores-a lower and upper bound (the true CIDI score is between these two scores). The lower and upper bound scores tend to be 1 to 4 percentage points apart for the full sample and most subgroups. The impact estimates and their significance using both versions are very similar. In the report, we use the lower bound version of the measure (the most conservative estimate of the probability of depression).(back)

aReliability was estimated using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha formula.(back)

FATHER STUDY MEASURES

Father Activities with Child – measures the frequency with which the father or father figure reported engaging in different activities with the child over the past month. These included social activities; activities that can stimulate language development, such as reading or telling stories, dancing, singing, and playing outside together; caregiving activities such as putting the child to bed getting up at night with the child, and preparing meals. Item responses are coded on a six-point scale, with zero indicating “not at all”, and five indicating “more than once a day.”

Eliminating 8 items that had low variability, we factor analyzed 25 father-child activity items using a Varimax rotation to develop four factor scores. We selected a factor solution that conformed to the following criteria: (1) factors made conceptual sense, (2) yielded an internal consistency reliability (Coefficient alpha) of .65 or greater, (3) minimized the number of items that loaded appreciably (.35 or greater) on multiple factors, and (4) minimized the number of items that did not load appreciably on any factors. To make it possible to compare responses across the four different scores, we standardized raw factor scores by converting them to T-scores. T-Scores have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.

Frequency of Caregiving Activities Score – measures the frequency the father or father figure reports engaging in eight different caregiving activities, such as helping with tooth brushing or bathing the child. T-Scores ranged from 1 to 70.

Frequency of Social Activities Score – measures the frequency with which fathers and father figures reported engaging in five activities that had a social or external component, such as taking the child to visit relatives or going to a restaurant. T-Scores ranged from 1 to 73.

Frequency of Cognitive Activities Score – measures the frequency with which fathers and father figures reported engaging in five activities that had a cognitive development component, such as singing nursery rhymes, reading stories, or telling stories. T-Scores ranged from 1 to 73.

Frequency of Physical Play Score – measures the frequency with which fathers or father figures reported engaging in six activities that connoted play, ranging from calm activities such as rolling a ball or bouncing on the knee, to rough and tumble, such as playing chasing games or turning the child upside down. T-Scores ranged from 1 to 73.

Father Well-Being –

Parenting Stress Index – Short Form (PSI-SF) – measures the degree of stress in parent-child relationships stemming from three possible sources: the child’s challenging temperament, parental depression, and negatively reinforcing parent-child interactions (Abidin 1995). We included two subscales of the PSI-SF:

Parental Distress – measures the level of distress the parent is feeling in his or her role as a parent stemming from personal factors, including a low sense of competence as a parent, stress because of perceived restrictions stemming from parenting, depression, and lack of social support.

The parent answers whether he or she agrees or disagrees with statements such as, “You often have the feeling that you cannot handle things very well,” and “You feel trapped by your responsibilities as a parent,” and “You feel alone and without friends.” Item responses are coded on a 5-point scale, with 5 indicating high levels of parental distress. Scores on the 12-item subscale can range from 12 to 60.

Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction – measures the father’s perception that the child does not meet the father’s expectations and interactions with the child are not reinforcing the father. The father may perceive that the child is abusing or rejecting the father or that the father feels disappointed in or alienated from the child.

The father answers whether he agrees or disagrees with statements such as, “Your child rarely does things for you that make you feel good,” and “Most times you feel that your child does not like you and does not want to be close to you,” and “Your child seems to smile less than most children.” Item responses are coded on a 5-point scale, with 5 indicating high levels of parent-child dysfunctional interaction. Scores on the 12-item subscale can range from 12 to 60.

Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale – Short Form (CESD-SF) – measures symptoms of depression (Ross et al. 1983). It does not indicate a diagnosis of clinical depression, but it does discriminate between depressed patients and others. The scale includes 12 items taken from the full, 20-item CESD scale (Radloff 1977). Respondents were asked the number of days in the past week they had a particular symptom. Symptoms include poor appetite, restless sleep, loneliness, sadness, and lack of energy. Items coded on a four-point scale from rarely (0) to most days (3). Scores on the scale range from 0 to 36.

Severe Depressive Symptoms – percentage of fathers whose scores on the CESD-SF were 15 or higher. This corresponds to a score of 25 or higher on the full CES-D, which is used to indicate high levels of depressive symptoms (Seligman 1993).

Family Environment Scale – measures the social environments of families along 10 key dimensions, including family relationships (cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict); emphases within the family on aspects of personal development that can be supported by families (for example, achievement orientation; independence); and maintenance of the family system (organization and control) (Moos and Moos 1976). We measured one dimension:

Family Conflict – measures the extent to which the open expression of anger and aggression and generally conflictual interactions are characteristic of the family. Parents respond to items on a 4-point scale, where 4 indicates higher levels of agreement with statements such as, “We fight a lot,” and “We hardly ever lose our tempers.” Items were recoded and averaged so that 4 indicates high levels of conflict.

Discipline Strategies – measures the father’s strategies for handling four different potential conflict situations with the child: (1) the child keeps playing with breakable things; (2) the child refuses to eat; (3) the child throws a temper tantrum in a public place; and (4) the child hits the parent in anger. Fathers provided open-ended answers to how they would respond to each of the four situations, and these responses were classified into the types of discipline strategies, which were coded as binary variables. A father received a “1” for each strategy that was ever mentioned. In addition, we created the following composite measure:

Index of Severity of Discipline Strategies – measures the degree of harshness of discipline strategies suggested. An individual’s score on this index ranges from 1 to 5, and is determined by the harshest strategy that was suggested in response to any of the three conflict situations. Thus, fathers who said they would use physical punishment receive a 5; those who did not suggest physical punishment but did say they would shout at the child receive a 4; those whose harshest response was to threaten the child with punishment receive a 3; those who suggest sending the child to his or her room, ignoring the behavior, threatening time out or loss of treats, or saying “No!” receive a 2; and those who suggested only preventing the situation or distracting the child, removing the child or object, talking to the child, or putting the child in time out receive a 1.

Spanked Child in Previous Week – measures father’s report that he used physical punishment in the previous week by spanking the child.

Parenting Behavior –

During Father-Child Semistructured Play – measures the father’s behavior with the child during a semistructured play task. The father and child were given three bags of interesting toys and asked to play with the toys in sequence. The semistructured play task was videotaped, and child and parent behaviors were coded by child development researchers according to strict protocols. This assessment was adapted for this evaluation from the Three Box coding scales used in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network 1999). Coded dimensions of parenting behavior included:

Supportiveness – this composite measure is an average of father sensitivity, cognitive stimulation, and positive regard during play with the child. Sensitivity includes such behavior as acknowledgement of the child’s affect, vocalizations, and activity; facilitating the child’s play; changing the pace of play when the child seems under-stimulated or over-excited; and demonstrating developmentally appropriate expectations of behavior. Cognitive stimulation involves taking advantage of the activities and toys to facilitate learning, development, and achievement; for example, by encouraging the child to talk about the materials, by encouraging play in ways that illustrate or teach concepts such as colors or sizes, and by using language to label the child’s experiences or actions, to ask questions about the toys, to present activities in an organized series of steps, and to elaborate on the pictures in books or unique attributes of objects. Positive regard includes praising the child, smiling or laughing with the child, expressing affection, showing empathy for the child’s distress, and showing clear enjoyment of the child.

Intrusiveness – measures the extent to which the father exerts control over the child rather than acting in a way that recognizes and respects the validity of the child’s perspective. Higher scores on intrusiveness indicate that the father controlled the play agenda, not allowing the child to influence the focus or pace of play, grabbing toys away from the child, and not taking turns in play with the child.

During Father-Child Puzzle Challenge Task – measures the father’s behavior with the child during a puzzle completion task. The child was given a puzzle to play with, and the father was instructed to give the child any help needed. After 3 minutes, or earlier if the puzzle was completed, the interviewer gave the child a second, harder puzzle and asked the father not to help the child. If that puzzle was completed or 3 minutes elapsed, another, more challenging puzzle was provided. The puzzle challenge task was videotaped, and child and father behaviors were coded on a 7-point scale by child development researchers according to strict protocols. Four aspects of the father’s behavior with the child were rated on a 7-point scale:

Quality of Assistance – measures the frequency and quality of clear guidance to the child, flexible strategies for providing assistance, and diverse, descriptive verbal instructions and exchanges with the child.

Intrusiveness – measures the degree to which the father controls the child rather than recognizing and respecting the validity of the child’s independent efforts to solve the puzzle. For example, a father behaving intrusively may complete the puzzle for the child or offer rapid, frequent instructions.

Child Behavior with Father -

Child Behavior Checklist – Aggressive Behavior – this subscale measures the incidence of 19 child behavior problems that tend to occur together and constitute aggressive behavior problems. Parents completed the Aggressive subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 1 ½ to 5 Years (Achenbach and Rescorla 2000). Some behaviors asked about include, “Child has temper tantrums,” “Child hits others,” and “Child is easily frustrated.” For each of the possible behavior problems, the father was asked whether the child exhibits this behavior often, sometimes, or never. Scores range from 0, if all of the behavior problems are “never” observed by the parent, to 38, if all of the behavior problems are “often” observed.

During Father-Child Semistructured Play – measures the child’s behavior with the father during the semistructured play task.

Engagement – measures the extent to which the child shows, initiates, or maintains interaction with the father. This may be expressed by approaching or orienting toward the father, establishing eye contact with the father, positively responding to the fathers’ initiations, positive affect directed toward the father and/or engaging the parent in play. Very high engagement receives a 7.

Sustained Attention with Objects – measures the degree to which the child is involved with the toys presented in the three bags. Indicators include degree to which the child “focuses in” when playing with an object and the extent to which the child coordinates activities with several objects and/or explores different aspects of a toy. Very high sustained attention receives a 7.

Negativity Toward Father – measures the degree to which the child shows anger, hostility, or dislike toward the father. Expressions may be overt (for example, forcefully rejecting a toy offered by the parent or pushing the parent away) or covert (for example, hitting or throwing an object in response to the parent’s behavior). Very high negativity receives a 7.

During Father-Child Puzzle Challenge Task – measures the child’s behavior with the father during the puzzle completion task.

Engagement – measures the extent to which the child shows, initiates, or maintains interaction with the father. This may be expressed by approaching or orienting toward the father, establishing eye contact with the father, positively responding to the father’s suggestions, positive affect directed toward the father and/or engaging the father in the puzzle task. Very high engagement receives a 7.

Persistence – measures how goal-oriented, focused, and motivated the child remains toward the puzzle throughout the task. The focus of this measure is on the child’s apparent effort to solve the puzzle, not on how well the child performs. Very high persistence receives a 7.

Frustration with Task – measures the degree to which the child expresses frustration or anger toward the puzzle task, for example, by putting hands in lap, whining, pushing away puzzle pieces, crying about the puzzle, saying it is too hard, or throwing puzzle pieces. Very high frustration receives a 7.