Development of a Measure of the Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT)

2010-2014

The goal of this project was to develop a new measure that will assess the quality of child care settings, specifically the quality of caregiver-child interactions for infants and toddlers in non-parental care. The new measure was designed to be sensitive to the developmental levels of children ages birth to three years and to the adult behaviors that are responsive and stimulating for this age group. In addition, it was designed to be appropriate for use across different types of child care settings (i.e., center-based and family child care homes) as well as for both single- and mixed-age classrooms. Key tasks included (1) assessing the state of the measurement field related to child-adult interactions and quality of care settings for infants and toddlers; (2) developing a measure to assess the quality of  caregiver-child interaction in infant-toddler care settings; and (3) conducting psychometric testing to ensure the soundness of the measure for diverse populations and settings, including settings serving low-income families, settings having ethnic/racial diversity in caregivers and children, settings with children from non‐English speaking households, and settings with children with disabilities.

The points of contact are Amy Madigan and Jenessa Malin.

Project Team

Federal Project Officer:

Amy Madigan
Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation
Administration for Children and Families, DHHS
370 L'Enfant Promenade SW, 7th Floor W
Washington, DC 20447

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.:

Louisa Tarullo, Ed.D. Project Director
Sally Atkins-Burnett, Ph.D. Principal Investigator
Shannon Monahan, Ph.D. Survey Director

Subcontractors:

Tamara Halle, Ph.D. Child Trends
Margaret Burchinal, Ph.D. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Kerry Kriener-Althen, Ph.D. WestEd

Related Resources

This report provides an overview of the Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT) observation tool, which was designed to measure the quality of caregiver-child interactions in child care settings serving infants and toddlers. The tool can be used across different types of settings and measures caregiver support for infant/toddler social-emotional development, cognitive development, language and literacy development...

This literature review is one of several components of the Measurement Development: Quality of Caregiver-Child...