Measuring level of service Integration within ECEC child centers: development and validation of the Index for child center Integration.

In early childhood education and care, professionals from childcare, education, and family support services engage in interprofessional collaboration. In this study, we present the background and development of the newly developed Index for Child Center Integration (ICCI), a comprehensive instrument designed to measure the level of collaboration at the organizational level between childcare, education, and family support services from the perspective of childcare and education. Interviews with managerial staff of 46 Dutch child centers were used to investigate the factor structure and evaluate the reliability of the ICCI. In addition, 788 professionals completed a social network questionnaire to assess interprofessional collaboration at individual level. A factor analysis revealed a two-factor solution: interprofessional collaboration for universal and targeted services. The ICCI demonstrated good reliability (Cronbach's α is .92 for the overall measure, universal scale: .94, targeted scale: .80). The results of the social network analysis supported convergent validity. The new measure allows in-depth investigation of interprofessional collaboration of various early years practitioners in future research.