Head Start Miami-Dade County, 2014-2015

The Head Start Miami-Dade County, 2014-2015 study seeks to validate a novel computerized measure of motivation orientation among 350 low-income preschoolers served by the Head Start program. To address the lack of developmentally appropriate and reliable measures of motivation orientation, a Computer Administered Battery of Observable Motivation (CABoOM) was developed. CABoOM consists of three tasks (sling shot, escape the grid, and memory matching) ranging in solvability and level of difficulty. The assessments were collected twice in the spring, once on the full sample and a second time within two weeks on a subset of the sample. Direct assessments of school readiness outcomes such as children's language and science abilities were collected, along with a teacher rating scale of approaches to learning in order to allow for the examination of gains across the year.