Expanding home visiting outcomes: Collaborative measurement of parental play beliefs and examination of their association with parents’ involvement in toddler’s learning

•A community-based, partnership approach yielded a uni-dimensional scale of parental beliefs about play for toddlers in a child-development-focused home visiting program.•A combined approach of classical test theory and item response theory produced reliable scales for English- and Spanish-speaking parents.•English- and Spanish-speaking parents’ reported play beliefs were concurrently associated with their involvement in early learning experiences.•This study provides the preliminary development of a key assessment tool for evaluating child-development home visiting programs.

Home visiting is a unique method of service delivery that has the potential to strengthen parenting attitudes and behaviors that are critical to children's early development and learning. Although there is growing interest and federal support for evidence-based home visiting, meaningful assessment measures to appropriately evaluate and monitor program outcomes for young children and their families are lacking. In partnership with a national home visiting program, this study used a mixed-method approach to develop an assessment of parents’ perceptions of play for families of two- and three-year-old children, named the Toddlers & Play Scale. English and Spanish versions of the scale were independently and rigorously analyzed, with results indicating a unidimensional scale for both versions. The measure represents parents’ perspectives about salience of play to children’s early learning. Parent’s report on the Toddlers & Play was found to be significantly correlated to their reported involvement in children’s learning, particularly for Spanish-speaking parents. This study is an initial step in examining the role of parental play beliefs and behaviors as facilitators of home visiting service delivery. Directions for advancing the psychometric quality and application of Toddlers and Play are delineated.