The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Revisited

This review describes the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME). After describing the structure of the instrument, it shows how it has been used successfully in studies on normally developing children and on samples drawn from high-risk populations. These are followed by studies showing how the HOME has been used to evaluate interventions. Although most interventions are not designed primarily on the basis of the HOME outcomes, the instrument has been used as a measure of the effectiveness of the intervention schedule. HOME has been used extensively in research to reveal relationships between several aspects of the home environment and children’s developmental outcomes. The very good relationship between HOME scores and children’s measures of developmental competence has also been found in nonnormative populations and research has attempted to identify the specific aspects of the home environment, as indexed by the HOME subscales that reveal the strengths or the weaknesses of homes of at-risk populations.