Improving inexperienced raters' evaluations of day care quality through the use of a guide

Abstract

The present study demonstrates that inexperienced female raters provided with a Parent Guide to Quality Day Care Centers (experimental group) made more discriminating judgments of day care center quality than did a similar group of female raters who were not provided with the guide until several days after visiting the same centers (control group). The indices of quality included a global nine-point rating scale and the number of items from the guide that were observed in the centers. The experimental group made global ratings of quality (on the nine-point ratings scale) that were highly similar to those made on the same centers by a group of local day care professionals. Finally, as compared to the professionals' judgments, the raters, particularly those in the control group, overestimated the quality of a subset of centers that served primarily black clientele.