In several posts on this site, I have provided updates related to the comprehensive project and research study occurring in the Province of Saskatchwan’s Ministry of Education child care programs involving their development and implementation of a differential monitoring approach to licensing and regulatory compliance.

As reported previously, they have gone through several developmental stages over the past several years in developing their licensing key indicators and risk assessment rules. These systems have been validated (please see the National Association for Regulatory Administration (NARA) website: NARA Key Indicators) for the final report on these validation studies.

The last component in the development of the Saskatchewan Differential Monitoring approach was to develop and implement quality indicators. Saskatchewan is the first jurisdiction to employ all components to a differential monitoring approach. This part of the project is nearing its conclusion as 85% of the data to validate this portion of the approach is completed. It is projected that by the end of the month all data will be collected and analyzed by that point. A final report will be generated at that point and posted to the NARA website along with the other validation study reports.

Just as a sneak preview, it appears that the program quality indicators scale (Saskatchewan Early Childhood Program Quality Indicators) developed and tested in this study will be validated when compared to environmental rating scales (ECERS & ITERS) and regulatory compliance data (RCS: Regulatory Compliance Scale). This will only help to add to the tools that are available to licensing agencies as they monitor early care and education programs throughout Canada and the United States as well as beyond. The new program quality indicator scale will have broad applicability and be based upon a solid empirical base.

Attached below is the codebook being used for the analyses and to generate the output for the validation study and a draft of the final report format for this very important study.