Development and Validation of an Observation Scale for Day Care Programs

어린이집 프로그램 관찰척도의 개발과 타당화

This study aimed to develop an observation scale for assessing the quality of day care programs and to examine reliability and validity of the scale. Instruments included 3 self-assessment scales, the Evaluation Scale for Early Childhood Programs and an observation scale completed by 8 trained observers in 89 day care sites. Item analysis indicated that most items were acceptable in terms of item discrimination and item response distribution. Cronbach ${\alpha}^{\prime}s$ and inter-observer reliability were relatively high. Validity of the scale was evidenced by correlations between the observation scale and the criterion measure and inter-correlations among sub-areas of the observation scale. Scores on the observation scale were validated by quality ratings from self-assessment scores.