Predictors of the Social Validity Judgments of Early Childhood Intervention Performance Checklists and Practice Guides

Abstract

Early childhood intervention practitioners (N = 42) reviewed three early intervention performance checklists and three intervention practice guides and made social validity judgments of the acceptability and importance of the products. Both the checklists and practice guides included evidence-based characteristics and indicators that are known to be related to improved child learning and development. Hierarchical regression analyses of the relationship between five predictor variables and the study participants’ social validity judgments and found that only practitioners’ cognitive appraisals of the checklists and practice guides accounted for significant amounts of variance in their social validity judgments beyond that accounted for by the other predictors (education, years of experience, primary role, and type of program). The importance of cognitive appraisals for understanding their influence on practitioner social validity judgments are described as are the limitations of the study.