An acronym for the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory, originally devised by Bettye M. Caldwell and developed in collaboration with Robert H. Bradley at the University of Arkansas. It is designed to measure the quality and quantity of stimulation and support available to a child in the home environment from infancy through to 14 years-of-age. Items in the inventory are scored as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ during a 45 to 90 minute home visit based on a semi-structured combination of interview and observation. The inventory has demonstratedhigh (>.90) inter-rater reliability and has been used across socioeconomicstrata in a number of Western countries, as well as in African and Australia. Moreover, it has frequently been used for research purposes in many countries in evaluating the effectiveness of intervention programs.
Inventories are available for different age groupings. The Infant/Toddler (IT) HOME covers birth to age three, and is composed of 45 items clustered into six sub scales:
- Parental responsivity
- Acceptance of child
- Organization of the environment
- Learning materials
- Parental Involvement
- Variety in experience
For 3 to 6 years of age, there is the Early Childhood (EC) HOME containing 55 items grouped into 8 sub-scales:
- Learning materials
- Language stimulation
- Physical environment
- Parental responsivity
- Learning stimulation
- Modeling of social maturity
- Variety in experience
- Acceptance of child.
The Middle Childhood (MC) HOME is concerned with the age range of 6 to 10 years, and contains 59 items allocated to eight sub-scales:
- Parental responsivity
- Physical environment
- Learning materials
- Active stimulation
- Encouraging maturity
- Emotional climate
- Parental involvement
- Family participation.
A fourth inventory, the Early Adolescent (EA) HOME, is designed for use with 10- to 15-years-olds, and is made up of 60 items distributed across 7 sub-scales:
- Physical environment
- Learning materials
- Modeling
- Instructional activities
- Regulatory activities
- Variety of experience
- Acceptance & responsivity
The HOME inventory has been frequently used for research purposes in many countries in, for example, evaluating the effectiveness of intervention programs.
See Caregiver Interaction Scale (CIS), Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS), Environment, Leiter International Performance Scale, Intervention study, Quality of daycare