Historically, child care quality research has focused primarily on typically developing children cared for in center-based programs. Findings from this research suggests that variations in quality of care have an effect on children's well-being and developmental outcomes. In this paper, we draw on child care quality research to inform our understanding of quality in early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. Conceptual issues in defining quality and methodological challenges for assessing quality of early intervention services are presented. In the final sections of this paper, we discuss our efforts to design a measure of quality for early intervention programs and present some of the unresolved issues related to the assessment of quality in early intervention programs.
