Abstract:

The Early Childhood Physical Environment Rating Scale (ECPERS) has been designed to assess the quality of the physical environment of early childhood educational facilities. The purpose of the current research was to examine the content and construct validity of the scale. With regard to content validity, the vast majority of items (93%) in the scale were found to be important to very important by a diverse panel of 12 experts. Construct validity was measured as the degree of agreement between expert's global evaluation of a center and by using the 142-item ECPERS scale. The data from 13 experts assessing 13 different centers across Australia and New Zealand showed a very high correlation between expert's judgements and ECPERS score (r=0.85). The results indicate that ECPERS is a valid instrument for the measurement of the quality of the physical environment of early childhood centers relative to the potential for child development and learning.