The Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (ERA) (Clark,\n1985, 2006, 2010, 2015) was designed to measure the quality of affect and\nbehavior in parent-child interactions. The instrument uses ratings that are\nbased on observations of 5-minute videotaped interactions during feeding,\nstructured task, or free play. The purpose of the ERA is to attempt to capture\nthe child\u2019s experience of the parent, the parents\u2019 experience of the child, the\naffective and behavioral characteristics that each bring to the interaction,\nand the quality or tone of the relationship. The ERA was developed to classify\nboth clinical and research observations and assess in a systematic manner the\nbehavioral style and affective quality believed to be indicators of disturbed\nrelationship patterns. It includes an assessment of the areas of concern as\nwell as areas of strength in the interaction for the parent, the child, and the\ndyad. Profiles may be developed for use in focusing clinical intervention\nefforts with families at risk for early relational disturbances, in treatment\noutcome and program evaluation studies, and in research seeking to document the\ninteractional patterns of high-risk groups of parent-child dyads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The initial instrument was originally developed to assess\nand describe patterns of interaction in mothers with psychiatric disorders and\ntheir infants and young children and to focus early intervention efforts aimed\nat improving parenting skills and relationship quality (Musick, Clark, &\nCohler, 1981). ERA items were selected and developed based on theory,\ndevelopmental studies, and clinical observations of high-risk and\nwell-functioning mother-child dyads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An earlier version, the Mothers\u2019 Project Rating Scales of\nMother-Child Interaction, consisted of 53 items (Clark, 1983; Clark, Musick,\nStott, Klehr, & Cohler, 1984). The scales were refined to measure\ntherapeutic change and to describe differences in interaction quality between\nchildren and mothers with and without a history of psychiatric disorders. The\noriginal scales were added to and revised to extend ratings downward to allow\nfor assessment of parental interactions with very young infants. Some\ncomponents of earlier existing items were dropped. The instrument was further\nmodified in 1985 for use with other high-risk groups in which the infants\nand\/or children brought risk to the relational quality (e.g., premature or\nmedically high-risk infants, children with developmental delays or\ndisturbances), and with additional high-risk parent populations (e.g., mothers\nand fathers with substance abuse problems, adolescent parents) (Clark, 1985).\nItems with no variability were dropped, components of some items were removed\nto improve inter-rater reliability and additional child and parental items were\nadded to improve the sensitivity of the instrument to possible differences in\nother clinical and community populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The revised instrument was named the Parent-Child Early\nRelational Assessment (PCERA) (Clark, 1985), and includes a total of 65\nindividual items composed of 29 parental, 28 child, and 8 dyadic items. Further\nrevisions have been made in 2006, 2010 and 2015. The instrument has come to be\nreferred to as the Early Relational Assessment or ERA (Clark, 1999).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ERA has been used in more than 400 programs and research\nprojects internationally. Psychometric work is ongoing, and reliability and\nvalidity have been addressed in both high-risk and normative populations\n(Clark, 1999; Clark et al., 2004).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conceptual Background<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The specific items or behaviors selected for inclusion in\nthe ERA were derived from psychodynamic, self-psychology, attachment, and\nsoviet cognitive-linguistic theories, as well as results from previous\ndevelopmental studies and clinical observations of parent-child interactions of\nhigh- and low-risk samples (Clark, Paulson, & Conlin, 1993; Clark, Tluczek\n& Gallagher, 2004). The conceptual framework and particular items thought\nto be important for determining areas of strength and concern in parent-child\nrelationships were drawn from the theories of Winnicott (1965) (genuine visual\nregard); Sander (1964) (negotiating a fit); A. Freud (1970) (auxiliary\nego\/mediating the environment); Kohut (1971) (mirroring); Vygotsky (1978)\n(scaffolding\/structuring); Bruner (1974, 1975) (joint attention); Emde (1980)\n(emotional availability); and Stern (1985) (affective attunement) and the\nempirical studies of Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton (1974) (sensitivity and\nresponsiveness); Clark-Stewart (1973) (social responsivity); Lewis and\nRosenblum (1974) (contingent responsivity); Demos (1982) (positive affect); and\nTronick (1982) (affect matching).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The quality of interaction, rather than the quantity of\ninteraction, may be more relevant to the young child\u2019s experience of his\nprimary relationships. For example, mothers can often \u201cgo through the motions\u201d\n(e.g., verbalize a great deal of commands but not use language to communicate,\nto extend, or to elaborate the child\u2019s verbalizations or may relate with flat\nor negative affect). Thus, a macro (e.g., global rating of 5 minutes of interaction)\nrather than a micro (e.g., time sampling, frequency count) assessment approach\nwas used to attempt to capture meaning and content. The ERA extends the work of\nprevious investigators by asking raters not only to look at concrete and\ndiscrete behaviors but also to \u201corganize and synthesize from a greater number\nof cues to a more abstract construct\u201d (Yarrow & Anderson, 1979). Although\nacknowledging the contribution of the child to the quality of parent-child\ninteractions in the earliest years, the mother\u2019s behavioral patterns and\naffective involvement are viewed as contributing significantly to the child\u2019s\ndevelopment by facilitating optimal growth of emerging abilities and a sense of\ncompetence in his or her interactions with people and things. In particular, a\nmother\u2019s positive affect has been found to serve an organizing function for her\ninfant, contributing to the infant\u2019s emotional and behavioral regulation\n(Demos, 1982).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Review of Validity Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Discriminant validity of the ERA has been established through\ndemonstrated differences between various groups of high-risk and\nwell-functioning parent-infant dyads (see Table 1). For example, mothers with\npsychiatric diagnosis were differentiated from mothers without diagnosis on ERA\nscales of maternal positive affective involvement and responsiveness and\nmaternal consistency (Clark, 1983); low-income parents of non-organic failure\nto thrive children as compared to parents of children with adequate growth have\nbeen found to exhibit less nurturant, more neglectful behavior as measured by\nERA scales (Black, Hutcheson, Dubowitz, & Berenson-Howard, 1994); and\nmothers with histories of drug-abuse during pregnancy as compared with\ndrug-free controls were rated lower on enthusiasm and responsivity to infants\u2019\ncues, and their infants were found to express less positive affect (Burns,\nChethik, Burns, & Clark, 1997). Concurrent validity has been documented\nwith ERA subscales correlating significantly with measures of similar\nconstructs including the security of an infant\u2019s attachment to the mother as\ndefined by the Attachment Q-Sort (Waters & Deane, 1985) and the Ainsworth\nStrange Situation (Ainsworth, Biehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978), as described\nby Teti, Nakagawa, Das, and Wirth (1991); with maternal internal working models\n(George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), as described by Das Eiden, Teti, and Corns\n(1995); with the Parenting Expectations Profile (Stoiber, 1993); with the Early\nCoping Inventory (Zeitlin, Williamson, & Szczepanski, 1988), as described\nby Stoiber and Houghton (1993); and with the Sense of Competence and\nReinforcement of Child subscales of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI)\n(Abidin,1986), as described by Grych and Clark (1999).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ERA\u2019s sensitivity to affective and behavioral change has\nbeen found in numerous therapeutic intervention outcome studies, for example,\nwith sleep-disturbed toddlers (Minde, Faucon, & Falkner, 1994), with\ndepressed mothers and their infants (Clark, Keller, Fedderley, & Paulson,\n1993; Clark, Tluczek. & Wenzel, 2003; Goodman et al 2008; Clark, Tluczek,\n& Brown, 2008), and with adolescent mothers and their young children\n(Stoiber, 1993). The ERA also has been found to be sensitive in a non-clinical\npopulation to differences in mother-infant and father-infant relational quality\nin families of employed and non-employed women (Clark, Hyde, Essex, &\nKlein, 1997; Grych & Clark, 1999).<\/p>\n\n\n\n An exploratory factor analysis conducted for the study of\nmother-infant interactions during feeding at 4 months of age supported 6 scales\n(two parent, two child, two dyadic). A replication with an older age group and\nwith an age-appropriate task (free play) using both exploratory and\nconfirmatory factor analytic methods was then designed. Although the ERA is\nwidely used in clinical and research programs to discriminate parent-child\ndyads with and without early relational disturbances, a study that clarified\nthe factor structure of the three components of this instrument was required to\ndetermine the construct validity of scores on the ERA in a normative sample of\n12-month-old infants and their mothers during free play and presents data using\nmore sophisticated levels of analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the study to determine the factorial validity of scores on the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment in a normative population of mothers and their 12-month-old infants, parent, child and dyadic items scored from free play interactions were analyzed as separate components of the instrument (Clark, 1999). Scores on three parent, three infant, and two dyadic subscales were examined for reliability and convergent and discriminant validity using confirmatory factor analysis. To provide confidence in the results, a factorial invariance study using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using a separate sample. All 8 subscale scores demonstrated high levels of internal consistency, with coefficients ranging from .75 to .96. Evidence was also found for convergent and discriminant validity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (ERA) The Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (ERA) (Clark, 1985, 2006, 2010, 2015) was designed to measure the quality of affect and behavior in parent-child interactions. The instrument uses ratings that are based on observations of 5-minute videotaped interactions during feeding, structured task, or free play. The purpose of the ERA …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bera.psychiatry.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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