Tools of the trade: A commentary

Constructing and validating measures of human settings, like the HOME Inventory, is complicated because settings contain so many social and physical affordances. To evaluate the usefulness of indicators contained in such measures requires a solid framework that clearly explicates the features of the environment and how those features are connected to features of the broader ecological context and to human characteristics. Even with such a framework, making decisions about what indicators to use to represent the setting and how to organize those indicators is difficult due to the complex interplay between humans and the environments they inhabit. Validating such measures is challenging because the measure can be used for multiple purposes and for diverse populations. Headway in developing valid and useful measures of the home environment depends on increased interaction between scholars representing diverse disciplines and practitioners providing diverse services to families.