The HOME inventory: a new scale for families of pre- and early adolescent children with disabilities.

A preliminary form of a new version of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) is presented. It is designed for use with families of children aged 10-15. The 80-item preliminary version of the Preadolescent HOME (PA-HOME) was field tested on 117 children with varying disabilities. The 80 items were selected from a pool of over 250 items by means of several field tests and accompanying item analyses. Both factor analyses and item analyses were used to help pare down items and produce a scale with acceptable psychometric properties. The psychometric properties of the PA-HOME are quite similar to those reported for the other three versions of the HOME Inventory. It appears to be a reasonably reliable scale with moderate correlations with other measures of the family environment, such as SES, social support, and marital stability. It has low to moderate correlations with measures of child competence in this sample of children with disabilities. The correlations are of the same general magnitude of correlations between the Infant-Toddler, Early Childhood, and Middle Childhood versions of HOME in samples of younger children with disabilities.

Uses of the HOME inventory for families with handicapped children.

The use of the HOME Inventory with families of children with handicaps was described. Normative and psychometric information for the Infant-Toddler, Early Childhood, and Middle Childhood versions of the Inventory was provided for groups of children with diverse handicaps and groups of children with mental retardation. Moderate correlations were observed between HOME and family social status measures, minimal between HOME and life stress measures, and low to moderate between HOME and social support measures. Low to moderate correlations were observed between HOME and child competence measures.