As noted earlier in this document, the ECERS-3 is a revision of the widely used and documented Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS), one in a family of instruments designed to assess the overall quality of early childhood programs. Together, these scales have been used in major research projects in the United States, as well as in a number of other countries. With only few exceptions (e.g., Sabol & Pianta, 2014), extensive research has documented both the ability of the scales to be used reliably and the validity of the scales in terms of their relation to other measures of quality and their ties to child development outcomes for children in classrooms with varying environmental ratings.

Reliability and Validity of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale®, Third Edition (PDF)