The Children’s Physical Environment Rating Scale (CPERS): reliability and validity for assessing the physical environment of early childhood educational facilities

This paper summarizes a series of studies conducted to test the reliability and validity of a new scale intended for the assessment of early childhood development centers (such as child care centers, nursery schools, kindergartens, and the like). The physical environment of early childhood facilities—e.g., size, density, plan type, activity settings—is related to children’s cognitive and social development. While a number of tools exist for assessing childcare settings, the new Children’s Physical Environments Rating Scale (CPERS) is the first to assess the physical environment of early childhood environments. The new scale is based on an interactional-constructivist theory, the research literature, international preschool standards, and the wisdom of leading European educators. CPERS is comprised of 124 items organized into 14 subscales focusing on planning, overall architectural quality, indoor activity spaces, and outdoor play areas. This paper summarizes the background, organization, and content of CPERS, and reports on the methods and results of a series of reliability and validity studies conducted between 1997 and 2003. The results indicated high internal consistency, high inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities, and very high construct validity of CPERS and confirmed its utility for both research and general use in a variety of applications