A factor analytic study of the infant-toddler and early childhood versions of the home inventory

Over the past 40 years research has clearly established a link between children's experiences in their home environment and their health and behavioral development to the point that it has become common to include measures of the home environment in investigations of human development as well as in clinical follow-ups. This study examines the underlying characteristics of the home environment as measured by the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory at two different time points in the children's development-12 and 36 months-using a birth cohort of 985 preterm, low birth weight infants from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP). Separate maximum likelihood factor analyses were performed on the items of the Infant/Toddler (IT-HOME) and the Early Childhood (EC-HOME) versions of HOME and the resulting factors were rotated using the varimax criterion. The rotated factor structures are in agreement with the identified subscales of these two versions of HOME. In addition, the factor structures of the two versions are so similar that they appear to be measuring the same environmental dimensions at two different developmental periods.