Abstract:
The Child Observation Record (COR) is designed to help teachers and caregivers determine the developmental status of young children ages 2.2 - 6 years. It is an observational assessment that can be used with individuals or groups and includes six categories: 1) Initiative, 2) Social Relations, 3) Creative Representation, 4) Music and Movement, 5) Language and Literacy, and 6) Logic and Mathematics. Activities in these categories are those that occur typically in a pre-school day and each category has between three and eight items. The teacher or caregiver takes a series of brief notes over several months and at the end of that time, rates the child's behavior using a 30-item questionnaire with five response options per item. Training is necessary to use the COR and may be provided by a test administrator who has attended a COR training workshop. The COR may be used two or three times a year to measure a child's progress, and may be used alone or as part of an assessment profile. Results may be used in parent workshops, as a means of comparing progress across classrooms, as proof of progress for program funding purposes, and for program evaluation. Scores are interpreted by the test administrator through comparison with averages from the norming sample for each of the six categories tested. Standard deviations are also used to judge the distance from the mean of an individual score. Internal reliability for the COR ranges from .80 to .93 for teachers and from .72 to .91 for assistant teachers. Inter-rater reliability ranges from .79 - .93. The COR was cross-validated on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities with correlations on the various subtests ranging from .27 - .66.