Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO)
PICCOLO, Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes, is an observational parenting measure developed for practitioners. It is reliable, valid, and practical to use for observing, tracking, and supporting parenting interactions that lead to positive child outcomes from infancy through preschool.
To develop the measure, the project used an archive of over 2000+ existing videotapes of parent-child interactions, along with outcome data on the children, from the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. The measurement development sample included European-American, Latino-American, and African-American families. The PICCOLO parenting measure includes items in 4 domains (Affection, Responsiveness, Encouragement, and Teaching) that were selected based on reliability, validity analyses, and feedback from coders and practitioners.
PICCOLO is being field tested with the Bear River Head Start, the Davis Early Head Start, and Guadalupe Schools Early Childhood Program. Research staff from EIRI have conducted multiple training sessions with these program partners, received over 250 new videotaped parent-child observations from the program participants, provided program staff with reliability reports on their PICCOLO scores from these observations, and evaluated the usefulness of the measure for practitioners.
Supporting materials, including a DVD based training program, are being developed with the assistance of our partner programs. PICCOLO will benefit Early Head Start programs and the families with whom they work. The PICCOLO measurement tool also has applications to other settings where intervention is provided to children via parent participation. Preliminary data about PICCOLO measurement development across ethnic groups was presented at the Society for Research on Child Development meetings in 2007 (http://www.eiri.usu.edu/projects/srcd/).
A full version of the PICCOLO measure is available by contacting either Lori Roggman or Mark Innocenti.
Project Assets