title: The HOME scale: the influence of socioeconomic status on the evaluation of the home environment.
abstract: Caldwell's Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) was developed to provide specific and sensitive information about the home and maternal environment as a stimulus to infant learning and development. The use of the HOME scale was examined in a sample of 118 middle- and lower-income mothers and their low-birth-weight (LBW) or very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants. The analysis of data demonstrated limited variability in the HOME scale total scores within each income group, and income alone was found to account for 41% of the variance in the sample. These findings raise questions about the effectiveness of the HOME scale in making useful discriminations about family functioning within an income group.
authors.affiliation: University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lotas
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Penticuff
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Medoff-Cooper
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brooten
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007230:Infant, Low Birth Weight; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011203:Poverty; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012931:Social Environment; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D012963:Sociometric Techniques; D014481:United States