The Family Environment Assessment: Study of the Use of the EC-HOME in a Brazilian Sample

The family environment may impact child development. However, investigating the family environment in Brazil can be a challenge due to the lack of appropriate instruments. To systematize the study of family environment the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory (HOME) was developed. The executive functions (EF), important for the control of thinking, behavior and emotion are among the skills affected by variables of the family environment. This study investigated reliability and validity evidences of the Brazilian Early Childhood version of the HOME (EC-HOME). Participants were 63 preschoolers (M=4.41y, SD=0.66), and their respective families. Children were evaluated in EF tasks. Parents responded to an identifi cation and socioeconomic status (SES) questionnaire. Home visits were conducted to apply the EC-HOME, with independent scoring by two evaluators for 20 of them. There was a high interrater agreement and satisfactory Cronbach’s alpha coeffi cient for the total scale. Correlation analysis suggested that the domains of the HOME contain relatively independent contents of the family context. Signifi cant correlations of the HOME domains with SES variables, as well as with children performance in EF tasks, were found. Findings provided some preliminary evidences of validity and reliability of the EC-HOME in a Brazilian sample.