The UVA Social Development Lab has developed several measures that are available for use to others in the field. There is no cost associated with using these measures; we do ask, of course, that you cite these measures properly.

The Teacher Belief Q-Sort (TBQ) measures three aspects of teachers’ beliefs and priorities: Discipline and Behavior Management, Teaching Practices, and Beliefs about Students. The TBQ method offers the opportunity to describe characteristics of teachers as well as compare a group of teachers’ beliefs and priorities to an “ideal” teacher. The TBQ is particularly effective at assessing teachers’ priorities and beliefs as they change during the process of implementation of a new intervention. The Q-sort method offers an advantage as it is less susceptible to bias than traditional questionnaire methods. Both the reliability and construct validity (both convergent and discriminant validity) appear high.

The measure is more fully explained in Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Storm, M., Sawyer, B., Pianta, R. C., & LaParo (2006). The Teacher Belief Q-Sort: A measure of teachers. priorities in relation to disciplinary practices, teaching practices, and beliefs about children. Journal of School Psychology, 44, 141-165. The measure can be administered using a paper or a web-based interface. Contact Tom Fruscello for an account to use the electronic version or for a copy of the paper version.

The Kindergarten Adjustment Questionnaire (KAQ) assesses students’ difficulty with the adjustment to kindergarten. This measure, developed by Rimm-Kaufman, Nathanson and Brock, was based on the Transition Practices Survey developed by the National Center for Early Development and Learning (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). The questionnaire includes 11 common problems associated with transition difficulty. For example, questions include, “This child lacks academic skills,” or “This child has shown difficulty working as part of a group.” Teachers respond to these statements using a 1 to 5 scale. This is a questionnaire best administered during the first six weeks of school and teachers are asked to report on children’s behavior during the first three weeks. Based on our initial work with this measure, the internal reliability was high (alpha = .91). See Nathanson, Rimm-Kaufman, and Brock (under review) for more information.

The Observed Child Engagement Scale (OCES) is an observationally-based rating scale designed to assess children’s behavioral engagement in learning in primary grade classroom environments. The behavioral codes were adapted from the NICHD-ECCRN Classroom Observation Scale to be well-suited for the kindergarten classroom. These scales include five dimensions including compliance, engagement, self-reliance, attention, and disruptive behavior (reverse scaled). Observers conduct classroom observations lasting a minimum of 10 minutes and take notes and assign a one to seven rating on the five dimensions. In a validation study, correlations between behavioral engagement in learning (as measured by the OCES) and the duration of time engaged was r = .73 (p < .001), suggesting strong concurrent validity. The coding manual provides indicators of behaviors associated with engagement. See Rimm-Kaufman, Curby, Grimm, Nathanson, & Brock (under review) for more information.