Quality in Home-Based Child Care: Summary of Existing Measures and Indicators

This review is one component of the HBCC Supply and Quality project, funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families. This project is summarizing what is known about HBCC supply and quality, developing a research agenda to fill gaps in knowledge, and conducting new research to answer important questions.

The findings from this review will: (1) lay critical groundwork to adapt or develop new tools or resources used to assess quality in HBCC settings, (2) guide how the project team approaches measurement in the research agenda, and (3) help early childhood stakeholders and others interested in HBCC quality select measures or indicators for different purposes.

• By design, almost all measures and most indicators in this review were developed for use in HBCC, but most were based on or designed to parallel measures of center-based care. Few were developed to account for features more likely to occur or to be implemented differently in HBCC settings, especially settings that are legally exempt from regulation (license-exempt) such as family, friend, and neighbor care.
• Some constructs that are important for HBCC settings are never found or seldom found in measures or indicators, including aspects of family—provider relationships and conditions for operations and sustainability. In addition, although most HBCC measures address support for development, many are aimed toward the needs of preschool children, and few focus on infants and toddlers or school-age children. No measures assess quality of care during nontraditional hours, which includes care provided during evening, weekend, or overnight hours.
• Most measures reported at least one type of psychometric evidence that meets the review’s reliability or validity standards. However, available evidence is limited, and it is often based on the full measure, rather than the items that assess a particular component or feature in the measure.
• Most of the indicators have not been validated separately from center-based indicators. In the cases in which HBCC-specific evidence is available, validity and reliability generally meet the review’s minimum standards, but the sample is often limited in the characteristics of the HBCC setting or sample size. Most national standards included in our review do not present associated evidence on reliability or validity.
• Although training is available for most measures, few had associated quality improvement programs, such as coaching or professional development. And although the associated costs of the measures generally were low (less than $100), the costs for training and certification generally were high (in some cases more than $1,000).

The review described in this summary report includes 31 measures and 46 sets of indicators, including measures and indicators that were designed for use in HBCC or include quality features more likely to occur or to be implemented differently in HBCC settings. This report summarizes key features across measures and indicators, gaps in quality measurement for HBCC, and the strengths and limitations of existing measures and indicators. A more detailed profile of each measure and set of indicators is in the accompanying “Compendium of Measures and Indicators of Home-Based Child Care Quality.”

Users should select measures or indicators that adequately represent the features of interest for their research or practice. Current efforts to assess and improve quality in HBCC should prioritize supporting providers as they work to develop and sustain high quality practices. For example, measure development could include creating a toolkit that identifies supports tailored for HBCC providers in different contexts and communities. The gaps in measurement summarized in the report have important implications for assessing quality and deciding about needed supports in HBCC settings.

Several gaps in measurement suggest directions for future measurement research.

• Going forward, measures should capture the unique strengths and characteristics of the range of HBCC providers and reflect their varied approaches to working with children and families. Future research is also needed to learn more about how to engage and support HBCC providers from diverse socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, and from different contexts and communities.
• Measurement is needed to assess the working conditions and other factors that affect the providers’ physical, emotional, and economic well-being, in order to address provider needs and account for these factors in analysis of quality and when identifying needed supports.
• For purposes of quality and professional development, we recommend that beyond addressing how providers keep children safe and healthy, quality measurement should focus on how HBCC providers support social, emotional, physical, language, literacy, and cognitive development and play and leisure activities. There should be measures of how providers are responsive to and interact with families about the child’s care and their goals for children. Measurement should also examine how providers support family functioning, which might be especially important to consider in light of the share of families from diverse backgrounds that HBCC providers serve.
• Research is needed to inform measure development on what high quality care looks like during flexible and nontraditional hours and across wide age ranges. These are two aspects that are often unique to HBCC and can influence quality across many areas.

Doran, Elizabeth, Ann Li, Sally Atkins-Burnett, Jasmine Forde, Jaimie Orland, Marina Ragonese-Barnes, Nathan Mix, Natalie Reid, and Ashley Kopack Klein (2022). Quality in Home-Based Child Care: Summary of Existing Measures and Indicators. OPRE Report #2022-27. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.