Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (FCCERS-R)

Abstract

The Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (FCCERS-R) is an essential, comprehensive observational tool utilized globally to assess and enhance the quality of family child care settings. Specifically designed for environments accommodating children from birth to 12 years of age, including the caregiver’s own children, the scale evaluates various dimensions of the care environment. By providing detailed feedback across seven key subscales, the FCCERS-R serves as a crucial instrument for program improvement, professional development for early childhood educators, research, and regulatory oversight, ensuring settings are conducive to optimal child development and well-being.

Keywords

FCCERS-R, family child care, environment rating scale, child care quality, early childhood education, observational assessment, program evaluation, inter-rater reliability

Authors

Thelma Harms, Debby Cryer, Richard M. Clifford

Purpose

The primary purpose of the FCCERS-R is to provide a standardized, objective measure for evaluating the quality of the physical and social environment within family child care homes. This evaluation is critical for identifying specific strengths and weaknesses within the caregiving setting. The resulting data are then used to inform targeted interventions aimed at improving the quality of care provided.

Furthermore, the scale supports multiple applications across the early childhood field. It is instrumental in guiding professional development plans for caregivers, allowing training resources to be focused on areas of greatest need. For policymakers and regulatory bodies, the FCCERS-R establishes a measurable benchmark against which providers can be assessed for licensing, accreditation, and quality rating improvement systems (QRIS).

Construct

The FCCERS-R measures the overarching construct of Early Childhood Program Quality as applied specifically to family child care settings. This construct is defined multidimensionally, encompassing not just physical safety and basic needs, but also the complexity and richness of the learning environment, the quality of interaction between the caregiver and children, and the organizational structure of the daily program. The scale assumes that higher scores reflect an environment more supportive of children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.

The revised edition emphasizes a holistic view of quality, ensuring that the measurement addresses the unique challenges and opportunities inherent in a mixed-age family home setting, where personal and professional lives often intersect. The seven subscales collectively capture this complex construct, moving beyond simple compliance to assess the actual quality of experiences available to the child.

Validity

The validity of the FCCERS-R has been extensively established through rigorous academic research. Studies consistently demonstrate strong evidence of criterion validity, showing that scores obtained using the scale are significantly related to positive child development outcomes, including measures of language ability, cognitive skills, and social competence. Higher scores on the FCCERS-R typically predict better developmental trajectories for the children in care.

Additionally, the scale exhibits strong content validity, as its items are derived directly from established best practices and theoretical frameworks in early childhood education. The comprehensive coverage across the seven subscales ensures that all critical dimensions of quality in a family child care setting are accurately represented and assessed.

Reliability

The FCCERS-R is known for its robust psychometric properties, particularly its high inter-rater reliability. Achieving high inter-rater reliability is crucial for observational tools, meaning that different trained evaluators observing the same environment independently will yield highly consistent scores. This consistency ensures that the assessment results are objective and not dependent on the subjective judgment of a single observer.

The high reliability is maintained through detailed training protocols and specific scoring notes provided in the official FCCERS-R manual. Furthermore, internal consistency measures across the scale’s items generally indicate that the subscales are cohesive and reliably measure their intended dimensions of quality.

Factor Analysis

Factor analysis of the FCCERS-R generally supports the intended seven-factor structure, corresponding to the seven primary subscales. These subscales represent distinct, yet related, dimensions of environmental quality. While the overall scale score provides a holistic measure of quality, the factor structure allows researchers and practitioners to pinpoint specific areas—such as physical provision (Space and Furnishings) versus relational quality (Interaction)—that contribute independently to the overall rating.

The clear delineation of factors aids in the practical application of the scale for program improvement. A confirmed factor structure ensures that targeted interventions based on low subscale scores are addressing genuinely separate components of the care environment rather than overlapping issues.

Instrument

Test Type: Observational Rating Scale

Format: Direct observation and structured interview (with the provider) using a 7-point rating scale (1=Inadequate, 3=Minimal, 5=Good, 7=Excellent) for 32 specific items grouped into 7 subscales.

Language Available: English, Spanish, and various other languages through international adaptations.

Population Group: Family Child Care Providers and the environments they operate within.

Age Group: Children from birth (infants) through 12 years of age (school-age children).

Population Details: Used in licensed and unlicensed home-based care settings where a small group of children, often including the provider’s own children, are cared for in a domestic environment.

Test Methodology: Trained evaluators spend a minimum of 3 hours observing the environment during a typical operating day. The observation is supplemented by a brief interview with the provider to confirm routines and policies, followed by a scoring process based on criterion-referenced indicators.

Keywords

child care quality assessment, early childhood environment, observational tool, Thelma Harms, quality rating improvement system, FCCERS-R subscales, family child care environment

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Scale developed by research team)

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected] (Contact for Environment Rating Scales Institute, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, UNC Chapel Hill)

Correspondence Address: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB #8180, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8180

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The FCCERS-R is copyrighted material. Permissions to use the scale are managed by the publisher, Teachers College Press, and the Environment Rating Scales Institute (ERSI). Purchase of the manual and necessary score sheets is required for administration. Training for reliable scoring is strongly recommended and often required for official research or regulatory use, incurring additional fees.

The original edition (FCCERS) was published in 1989. The Revised Edition (FCCERS-R) was officially published in 2007, and it is the current standard instrument.

Reference’s

• Harms, T., Cryer, D., & Clifford, R. M. (2007). Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition. Teachers College Press.
• Harms, T., Cryer, D., & Clifford, R. M. (1989). Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale. Teachers College Press.
• Cryer, D., Harms, T., & Riley, C. (2012). The Environment Rating Scales: A comprehensive system for assessing quality in early childhood programs. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27(4), 543-554.
• Fukkink, R. G., & Tavecchio, L. W. C. (2010). The effect of quality of day care on child development: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 31(1), 84-93.

Items of the Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (FCCERS-R)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The FCCERS-R consists of 32 items organized into seven subscales, which provide a comprehensive assessment of the child care environment:

1. Space and Furnishings: This subscale evaluates the adequacy and appropriateness of the physical space available for children, including indoor and outdoor areas, furniture, and room arrangement.
2. Personal Care Routines: This measures how well the childcare environment handles personal care routines such as meals/snacks, diapering/toileting, and health and safety practices.
3. Listening and Talking: This subscale assesses the opportunities children have for language development, including the caregiver’s communication with children and provision of books and other language materials.
4. Activities: This evaluates the availability and variety of age-appropriate activities, including fine motor, art, music, block play, dramatic play, nature/science, math/number activities, and promoting acceptance of diversity.
5. Interaction: This focuses on the quality of interactions between the caregiver and the children, including supervision of play and learning, staff-child interactions, and discipline practices.
6. Program Structure: This subscale examines the daily schedule, transitions between activities, and provisions for children with disabilities.
7. Parents and Provider: This assesses the relationship between the caregiver and the parents, including communication with parents and support for the family.