| The quality of a child's home environment is considered to be an important influence on various aspects of children's health and development. This relationship has now become so well established that at least some measure of the home environment is used in most research centering on children's development. Most measures of the home environment, however, have focused on assessing aspects of the social environment in the home rather than the physical environment, even though there is a considerable body of research suggesting that the physical environment has a substantial impact on children's development. This is in part a reflection of the continuing tendency in psychology to privilege social variables over physical variables.;The purpose of this study is to correlate parameters of the home environment with aspects of children development using a newly designed tool, "Measurement of Children's Home Environment" (MYCHE). Twenty-two parent-child dyads were sampled in this study, with children's ages between fourteen through twenty-four months. Measurement of the home environment included the MYCHE, the HOME scale and a parent questionnaire. Developmental evaluation of toddlers was assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II. Analyses indicate higher correlations between MYCHE scores and cognitive development scores than HOME scores and cognitive development scores. Using the MYCHE evaluation tool, the physical parameters most positively correlated with cognitive development were home resources, crowding, and noise. No significant relationships among physical parameters and gross motor development were found. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that the physical parameters of the home environment mediated aspects of the parent-child interaction as measured during a teaching episode. The policy implications of the study and the concept of "housing as intervention" are discussed. |
