Early Childhood Educators Confidence in Outdoor Movement, Physical Activity, Sedentary and Screen Behaviors Questionnaire (ECE-COMPASS)

1. Abstract

The Early Childhood Educators Confidence in Outdoor Movement, Physical Activity, Sedentary and Screen Behaviors Questionnaire (ECE-COMPASS), developed by Bruijns et al. (2023), is a dedicated psychometric instrument designed to assess the self-efficacy of early childhood educators (ECEs) in facilitating movement-promoting, outdoor, and sedentary-limiting environments within childcare settings. Grounded in Albert Bandura‘s Social Cognitive Theory and operationalized via his specific guidelines for constructing self-efficacy scales, the instrument addresses a critical gap in early childhood health behavior measurement. The finalized scale consists of 31 items organized into two distinct structural dimensions: Task Self-Efficacy (21 items) and Barrier Self-Efficacy (10 items). Respondents evaluate their confidence across an 11-point continuous response format ranging from 0 (“Not confident at all”) to 10 (“Completely confident”), with 5 demarcated as “Moderately confident.”

Psychometric evaluation among Canadian early childhood educators demonstrated strong internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of α = .94 for the Task Self-Efficacy subscale and α = .92 for the Barrier Self-Efficacy subscale. Temporal stability assessed across a 4-day test-retest interval yielded stability coefficients of r = .62 for Task Self-Efficacy and r = .69 for Barrier Self-Efficacy. Factorial validity, examined through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) employing the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) and oblique rotation, supported a 2-factor solution accounting for 54% of the total variance in the revised instrument, with 86.7% of factor loadings exceeding .50. Content and face validity were established through iterative expert consensus with mid-career scholars in pediatric physical activity and health psychology, referencing national pediatric guidelines such as the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years. The ECE-COMPASS provides researchers, educators, and child health advocates with a robust, theoretically grounded measurement tool to evaluate intervention efficacy, professional development needs, and institutional readiness regarding movement behaviors in early childhood education.

2. Keywords

Task Self-Efficacy, Barrier Self-Efficacy, Early Childhood Educators, Physical Activity Promotion, Outdoor Play, Sedentary Behavior, Screen Time Minimization, Risky Play, Social Cognitive Theory, Psychometric Validation, Factorial Validity, Scale Development

3. Authors

The ECE-COMPASS was developed and psychometrically validated by a multidisciplinary research team affiliated with the Child Health & Physical Activity Laboratory in the School of Occupational Therapy at the University of Western Ontario (Western University), London, Ontario, Canada:

• Brianne A. Bruijns, PhD — School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
• Andrew M. Johnson, PhD — School of Health Studies, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. ORCID: 0000-0002-7269-3016.
• Shauna M. Burke, PhD — School of Health Studies, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
• Patricia Tucker, PhD (Corresponding Author) — Professor, School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, Elborn College, Room 2547, 1201 Western Road, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 1H1. Email: [email protected]. ORCID: 0000-0002-8392-9418.

4. Purpose

Early childhood represents a sensitive developmental window during which lifelong movement behaviors, fundamental motor skills, and physical literacy trajectories are established. With a substantial proportion of young children spending significant portions of their waking hours in licensed early childhood education and care (ECEC) environments, early childhood educators occupy an influential role as social agents, environmental architects, and behavioral models. Despite international movement guidelines recommending at least 180 minutes of daily physical activity—including at least 60 minutes of energetic or vigorous play—and the minimization of prolonged sitting and screen exposure (Tremblay et al., 2017), observational studies routinely indicate high levels of sedentary time and insufficient physical activity within childcare centres.

The primary purpose of the ECE-COMPASS is to operationalize and measure the self-efficacy of early childhood educators with respect to executing specific movement-promoting curricula and overcoming the routine logistical, ecological, and psychological barriers encountered in childcare environments. Prior to the development of this instrument, researchers frequently relied on generic teacher self-efficacy scales or non-validated adaptations that failed to reflect the multifaceted 24-hour movement continuum (encompassing high-intensity physical activity, fundamental movement skills, outdoor risky play, prolonged sitting reduction, and screen management).

The practical and clinical applications of the ECE-COMPASS are threefold:

• Needs Assessment and Professional Development: Childcare regulatory bodies, vocational training programs, and curriculum directors can utilize the instrument as a diagnostic screening tool to identify educator confidence deficits in specific pedagogical domains, such as navigating risky play or managing outdoor transitions during inclement weather.
• Intervention Evaluation: In pediatric health and implementation research, the ECE-COMPASS functions as an outcome measure to evaluate the efficacy of continuing professional development (CPD) interventions, policy implementations, or environmental modifications aimed at transforming educators’ practices.
• Structural Mediation Modeling: Psychologists and behavioral epidemiologists can employ the scale within structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate the causal pathways linking educator self-efficacy, educator classroom behaviors, and children’s objectively measured accelerometer-derived physical activity and sedentary patterns.

5. Psychological Construct

The ECE-COMPASS measures Teacher Self-Efficacy within the specialized domain of pediatric movement and health behavior facilitation. According to social-cognitive psychometric conventions, self-efficacy is not a global, generalized personality trait, but rather a context-specific cognitive appraisal of capability. The instrument captures two correlated yet distinct psychometric subconstructs:

Task Self-Efficacy (21 Items)

Task self-efficacy refers to an educator’s subjective conviction in their capability to organize and execute specific instructional, environmental, and communicative behaviors required to promote optimal movement patterns. Within the ECE-COMPASS, task self-efficacy spans several distinct behavioral domains:

• Direct Instructional and Curricular Execution: Confidence in programming opportunities for at least 120 minutes of daily physical activity, facilitating vigorous activity (inducing sweating and heavy breathing), leading fundamental physical literacy exercises (e.g., throwing, balancing, jumping), and embedding active movement into cognitive curricula (e.g., literacy, numeracy).
• Environmental and Pedagogical Structuring: Confidence in providing a balanced mixture of child-directed (unstructured) active play and educator-facilitated (structured) activities, adapting movements for children with varying developmental capabilities, and creating supportive physical indoor/outdoor spaces.
• Sedentary and Screen Hygiene: Confidence in interrupting prolonged sitting spells (>60 minutes) using active transitions, actively avoiding child engagement with screen-based media during childcare hours, and providing multiple distinct outdoor sessions daily.
• Risky Play Facilitation: Confidence in engaging children in age-appropriate “risky play”—defined operationally as thrilling, adventurous play exploring physical limits with an inherent minor injury potential (e.g., climbing heights, sliding at high speeds)—which supports spatial awareness, autonomy, and risk calculation.
• Systemic and Behavioral Modeling: Confidence in developing formal organizational physical activity and screen-time policies, educating parents on physical literacy, and visibly modeling desired behaviors by remaining physically active and refraining from personal screen use or prolonged sitting during childcare operations.

Barrier Self-Efficacy (10 Items)

Barrier self-efficacy represents an educator’s perceived confidence in maintaining physical activity promotion and sedentary limitation routines when confronted with environmental, interpersonal, physiological, or organizational obstacles. Because childcare environments are dynamic and unpredictably demanding, task capability alone does not guarantee execution when friction occurs.

The 10 barrier items evaluate confidence under adverse circumstances, including:

• Environmental and Spatial Constraints: Orchestrating structured activities inside cramped physical facilities or running indoor active play when extreme weather precludes outdoor access.
• Weather and Logistical Hurdles: Delivering outdoor playtime during unfavorable (non-extreme) meteorological conditions (e.g., cold, rain, snow) and persevering when dressing children in outdoor gear consumes extended time and complex transitions.
• Interpersonal and Social Friction: Advocating for active play when colleagues or organizational supervisors do not value physical activity, and sustaining age-appropriate risky play when encountering opposition or anxiety from parents or peers.
• Personal and Child Fatigue: Suppressing sedentary bouts when children are irritable or tired, and maintaining active outdoor facilitation when the educator experiences acute physical or psychological fatigue.

6. Theoretical Framework

The psychological architecture of the ECE-COMPASS is rooted in Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), pioneered by Albert Bandura (1986, 1997, 2006). A foundational tenet of SCT is triadic reciprocal determinism, which posits that human functioning is the product of continuous, dynamic interactions between cognitive/personal factors, environmental influences, and behavioral patterns.

Within this framework, perceived self-efficacy functions as a central cognitive mediator: people form judgments about their abilities to achieve designated levels of performance. Bandura distinguished between efficacy expectations (the belief that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce an outcome) and outcome expectations (the judgment of the likely consequence that such behavior will yield). The ECE-COMPASS focuses exclusively on efficacy expectations, measuring personal agency (“Can I do it?”) rather than distal outcome beliefs (“Will doing it improve child health?”).

Bandura’s (2006) Guide for Creating Self-Efficacy Scales outlines several essential methodological rules that guided the development of the ECE-COMPASS:

• Domain Specificity: General self-efficacy scales lack predictive utility for specific health practices. The instrument is calibrated precisely to the day-to-day behavioral demands and systemic conditions of licensed childcare settings.
• Graduated Difficulty and Barrier Mapping: Self-efficacy assessments must measure perceived capability under challenging conditions, not merely under optimal circumstances. By pairing task items with explicit barrier challenges, the instrument avoids ceiling effects often observed when only measuring straightforward instructional tasks.
• Continuous Response Metrics: Rather than standard Likert-type agreement scales (e.g., “Agree/Disagree”), self-efficacy scales should record capability on an unipolar response scale ranging from complete absence of confidence to complete confidence (0 to 10 or 0 to 100). The ECE-COMPASS implements an 11-point continuum (0–10) anchored by descriptive operational markers, minimizing acquiescence response bias.

Furthermore, the instrument incorporates modern pediatric movement guidelines, particularly the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years (Tremblay et al., 2017). This guideline synthesis links social-cognitive agency to contemporary physiological milestones, defining specific physical activity volumes (≥120–180 minutes), sedentary limits (<60 minutes uninterrupted), outdoor immersive play, and zero-tolerance/restricted screen exposures.

7. Validity

The psychometric validation of the ECE-COMPASS by Bruijns et al. (2023) employed a structured multiphase approach to establish face, content, and construct (factorial) validity.

Face and Content Validity

Item generation began with an exhaustive review of early childhood movement literature, occupational standards for ECEs, and public health guidelines. Following initial drafting, the item pool was evaluated by an expert consensus panel consisting of mid-career researchers specializing in pediatric exercise science, physical literacy, and health psychology. Panel members systematically appraised item phrasing, developmental appropriateness, pedagogical realism, and theoretical alignment with Bandura’s self-efficacy construction rules. The panel ensured that all components of the 24-hour movement continuum—including nuanced areas such as educator personal role modeling, sedentary fragmentation, and outdoor adventurous/risky play—were represented without construct underrepresentation or construct-irrelevant variance.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was evaluated through exploratory factor analysis across iterative sample cohorts of Canadian early childhood educators. Factorial validity confirmed that the items converged onto theoretical dimensions reflecting distinct facets of professional self-efficacy:

• Model Parsimony: Information criteria comparisons (specifically the Bayesian Information Criterion, BIC) supported the structural retention of a 2-factor configuration over unidimensional or more complex multidimensional solutions.
• Factor Separation: The exploratory extraction delineated Task Self-Efficacy and Barrier Self-Efficacy as interdependent but structurally distinct dimensions. An oblique (direct oblimin) rotation accounted for the theoretical and empirical correlation between educators’ basic task confidence and their resilience against environmental obstacles.
• Factorial Explanatory Power: While the initial prototype explained 44% of the shared variance, post-modification item restructuring increased the total explained variance to 54%. Over 86.7% of all individual item factor loadings exceeded the standard conservative threshold of λ = .50, reflecting high construct validity.

8. Reliability

The reliability profile of the ECE-COMPASS was examined through assessments of internal consistency and short-term temporal stability (test-retest reliability).

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency reflects the degree to which items within a subscale measure the same underlying psychological construct. Across the finalized 31-item instrument, both dimensions exhibited high internal consistency:

• Task Self-Efficacy (21 items): Cronbach’s alpha was α = .94, denoting high inter-item homogeneity and low measurement error without excessive item redundancy.
• Barrier Self-Efficacy (10 items): Cronbach’s alpha was α = .92, confirming that diverse institutional, logistical, and environmental challenge items tap into a unified barrier-coping cognitive mechanism.

Test-Retest Reliability (Temporal Stability)

Temporal stability was evaluated across a 4-day retest interval in a subsample of practicing early childhood educators. Short-interval stability testing is vital for efficacy constructs to ensure that fluctuations represent true changes rather than random measurement noise:

• Task Self-Efficacy: Displayed a test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .62.
• Barrier Self-Efficacy: Displayed a test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .69.

These stability statistics demonstrate modest-to-moderate temporal stability. In psychometric theory, self-efficacy is conceptualized as a dynamic cognitive state rather than a static trait. Factors such as day-to-day pedagogical demands, staffing fluctuations, shifting child behavioral dynamics, and weather changes can exert immediate micro-level influences on educators’ self-efficacy perceptions, accounting for the modest test-retest values over short intervals.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural composition of the ECE-COMPASS was determined using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), which guided the revision of the initial prototype into the finalized 31-item instrument.

Initial Factor Extraction and Model Diagnostics

In the primary analytical phase, the initial item pool was evaluated using maximum likelihood estimation. The Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) indicated that a 2-factor solution provided the most parsimonious fit to the empirical data matrix, accounting for 44% of the total variance. The application of an oblique (direct oblimin) rotation was dictated by the theoretical expectation that task confidence and barrier-handling efficacy share common cognitive and environmental antecedents.

Item Diagnostics and Modifications

Factor loading patterns and cross-loadings prompted targeted revisions:

• Item Removal: One initial item was eliminated due to poor communality, ambiguous factor loading, and failure to meet the minimum psychometric threshold of .32.
• Item Additions: Two new items were formulated and integrated to comprehensively capture emerging priorities in childcare movement pedagogy (specifically relating to nuanced physical literacy execution and targeted active breaks).
• Language Modifications: Three items underwent semantic modifications to clarify terminology (e.g., standardizing definitions of “risky play” and specifying operational thresholds for prolonged sitting periods, such as “>60 minutes”).
• Cross-Loading Manifestations: Although the vast majority of items loaded cleanly, one barrier item concerning challenging transitions exhibited cross-loading across both the task and barrier dimensions, reflecting the dual cognitive burden of organizational routine and friction management.

Revised Model Parameters

Re-analysis of the modified 31-item questionnaire confirmed the stability of the 2-factor model, with the revised configuration explaining 54% of the total variance. Individual item factor loadings improved substantially, with 86.7% of items exhibiting loadings greater than .50, demonstrating clear separation between baseline instructional tasks and barrier-coping scenarios.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Tool Name: Early Childhood Educators Confidence in Outdoor Movement, Physical Activity, Sedentary and Screen Behaviors Questionnaire (ECE-COMPASS)
• Alternative Title: ECE Confidence in Outdoor Movement, PA, and Sedentary and Screen Behaviors questionnaire
• Instrument Type: Original psychometric inventory / self-report survey
• Constructs Assessed: Teacher Self-Efficacy, Pedagogical Health Promotion, Task Self-Efficacy, Barrier Self-Efficacy
• Target Population: Early Childhood Educators (ECEs), early years pedagogical staff, and licensed childcare providers (aged 18 years and older)
• Administration Format: Self-administered (electronic survey or paper-and-pencil)
• Completion Duration: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes
• Item Inventory: 31 items total
  • Task Self-Efficacy: 21 items (Items 1 through 21)
  • Barrier Self-Efficacy: 10 items (Items 22 through 31)
• Authentic Response Scale: 11-point continuous response scale (0 to 10)
  • 0 = Not confident at all
  • 5 = Moderately confident
  • 10 = Completely confident
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Subscale Scores: Calculated by computing the mean of the completed items within each subscale (Task Self-Efficacy score = sum of items 1–21 divided by 21; Barrier Self-Efficacy score = sum of items 22–31 divided by 10). Both scale scores range from 0 to 10.
  • Total Score: A composite overall self-efficacy index can be generated by averaging all 31 items, with higher composite scores indicating greater confidence in facilitating movement behaviors and overcoming pedagogical barriers.
  • Missing Data Handling: If less than 10% of items are missing, person-mean substitution within the respective subscale is recommended.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The ECE-COMPASS was formally published in 2023 by researchers at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada. The validation study is detailed in the Journal of Research in Childhood Education (Bruijns et al., 2023).

• Commercial Status: Non-commercial instrument.
• User Fee: There are no licensing fees for non-profit academic research, instructional use, or clinical training programs.
• Permissions & Inquiries: Educational institutions and researchers intending to implement the ECE-COMPASS are advised to contact the corresponding author, Dr. Patricia Tucker ([email protected]), or refer to the publisher’s copyright protocols via Taylor & Francis. The complete item set is available within the supplemental materials of the original publication.

12. References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman and Company.

Bandura, A. (2006). Guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. In F. Pajares & T. Urdan (Eds.), Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents (Vol. 5, pp. 307–337). Information Age Publishing.

Bruijns, B. A., Johnson, A. M., Burke, S. M., & Tucker, P. (2023). Educators’ self-efficacy to promote physical activity and outdoor play and minimize sedentary behaviors in childcare: A tool validation study. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 37(1), 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2022.2053006

Tremblay, M. S., Chaput, J. P., Adamo, K. B., Aubert, S., Barnes, J. D., Choquette, L., Duggan, M., Faulkner, G., Goldfield, G. S., Gray, C. E., Gruber, R., Janson, K., Janssen, I., Janssen, X., Garcia, A. J., Kuzik, N., LeBlanc, C., MacLean, J., Okely, A. D., … Carson, V. (2017). Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years (0–4 years): An integration of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 42(11), 1128–1145. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2017-0439

13. Items of the Scale