Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO) User's Guide

Where are parents' skills the strongest—and how can they be encouraged to better support young children's cognitive, social, and language development? Home visitors can find out in minutes with PICCOLO™, the quick, reliable observational tool designed to assess and monitor the quality of parent–child interactions. Developed for use with parents of young children, PICCOLO measures 29 developmentally supportive parenting behaviors in 4 critical domains—Affection, Responsiveness, Encouragement, and Teaching. It's the best way to assess which parenting behaviors are working, develop individualized interventions that help parents improve, and track the positive outcomes of your parent support program.

This User's Guide gives readers explicit guidance on using the PICCOLO, including a Frequently Asked Questions section. A discussion about the tool's development and psychometric properties section are also included. The appendix includes a photocopiable Spanish translation of the PICCOLO and the scoring key for the video clips on the PICCOLO DVD.

View our recorded webinar: How PICCOLO™ Can Help You Work More Effectively with Parents of Young Children presented by Lori Roggman.

Learn more about the PICCOLO.

Dr. Roggman is Professor in the Department of Family, Consumer, &Human Development at Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, Utah State University. Dr. Roggman's research focuses on parenting and children's early development. She has extensive experience in home visiting research, integrating theory-based inquiry with program evaluation, and training practitioners. She is a strong methodologist with expertise in observational data collection and longitudinal analysis and has authored several observation instruments used extensively by researchers and practitioners. She was principal investigator of a local research team for the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project.

Dr. Cook is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Child Development in the College of Science, California State University Stanislaus. Dr. Cook's work focuses on longitudinal developmental processes and supportive environments in homes, centers, and preschools related to children's school readiness, especially for groups at risk due to income level or disability. She worked on the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project and PICCOLO project at Utah State University and has extensive experience as a program evaluator. She has been a Head Start teaching coach and an early intervention home visitor trainer.

Dr. Innocenti is Director of the Research and Evaluation Division at the Center for Persons with Disabilities and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, Utah State University. Dr. Innocenti has over 30 years of experience working with infants and young children at-risk and with disabilities and their families in multiple research and model demonstration projects. Using an interdisciplinary model that recognizes the contribution of different disciplines and stakeholders, his research is conducted in and for communities. Recent projects focus on assessment and curriculum, home visiting effectiveness, and preschool intervention to prevent later special education.

Dr. Norman is Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, Utah State University. Dr. Jump's research focuses on promoting optimal development of children experiencing high levels of stress, whether it be due to orphanage environments, poverty, or adverse life events. She is an engaging trainer who focuses on how empirical research applies to real-life situations for staff, teachers, home visitors, and parents. She is a Co-Investigator on the Cache County, Utah, National Children's Study, and actively collaborates with international partners to improve early development of young children.

Dr. Christiansen is PICCOLO researcher and site coordinator for the Early Head Start (EHS) research and evaluation project in the Department of Family, Consumer, & Human Development at Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, Utah State University. Dr. Christiansen has worked on several projects as a home visitor trainer. She has extensive experience in child assessment, video observation, preschool evaluation, and teacher evaluation.

She is particularly interested in children's language development and reading acquisition. She worked as an assessor examining reading scores of Native American children. She used early PICCOLO data to study parenting interactions in a Spanish-speaking population in relation to child development.

Dr. Anderson is Executive Director for the Utah Association for the Education of Young Children. Dr. Anderson has over 20 years of experience in the field of early childhood, as an early childhood classroom teacher and as an instructor and mentor of early childhood professionals. Her work focuses on the effects on child development of early parenting and teacher interactions with children from families of low-income and ethnic minority backgrounds. She received a Head Start Graduate Student Research Scholars grant to develop an observational measure of fathers' early parenting behaviors for use by early childhood practitioners.