Initial Development of the Child Responsiveness Scale for Early Childhood Settings.

This article focuses on the development and initial psychometric evaluation of the Child Responsiveness Scale (CRS), an observational tool designed to assess child responsiveness to teacher-delivered practices aimed at promoting social-emotional competencies in early childhood classrooms. Across two studies involving children at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders and their teachers, the CRS demonstrated acceptable interrater reliability and a stable two-factor structure distinguishing positive and negative responsiveness. The CRS scores showed preliminary evidence of construct validity, sensitivity to variation across teachers, children, and coders, and potential utility as a component of treatment integrity measurement in classroom-based interventions. The findings suggest the CRS may fill a measurement gap by providing a multi-item, reliable, and valid tool to better understand child engagement in intervention delivery, though further research is needed to expand its validation and applicability.