Preliminary psychometric evidence of the Greek adaptation to the EC-CC HOME scale for use in institutional environments

Abstract

Although lacking in official figures, latest reports from NGOs highlight that Greece has over 85 institutional settings that house more than 2,500 children, excluding unaccompanied minors entering the system continuously for the past few years. Given the impact that institutional care has been found to have on psychological and cognitive outcomes, the authors make the case for the adaptation of Early Childhood Child Care HOME (EC-CC-HOME) a world-renowned instrument that assesses children’s child-care environment. In this instance, we have adapted the child-care version of HOME to assess the physical and organisations aspects of the residential environment, following the permission and through collaboration with the developer. This brief report presents some of the preliminary evidence of the first step undertaken towards the full adaptation of EC-CC-HOME in Greek and for use in institutional environments; participants were 29 children residing in such environments. Preliminary results on the psychometric characteristics of the measure, especially in relation to the learning aspect of the environment presented here, hold promise. This is an especially important first indication of how the measure works in view of the imminent adaptation of the scale to be used with institutional environments where children can benefit greatly from such a measure. Issues in relation to good practices in providing evidence for the psychometric characteristics of measures are briefly discussed as part of this investigation.