Coding schemes for assessing parent-child interaction

[mary elizabeth lyons <melyons@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello.  I am a doctoral student in Human Development at the University of Maryland at 
College Park.  I am currently involved in a federally
funded joint research project with a child psychiatrist at Children's
National Medical Center in D.C. and my advisor, a clinical psychologist 
and UMD professor.  The goal of our research is to promote quality
in the caretaking environments of foster children, in both traditional
foster care and kinship care.  We are examining child functioning
(emotional, behavioral, and intellectual), foster parent functioning
(mental health, stress levels, resources, etc.), and the relationship
between the foster mother and the child.  We are currently gathering data for children 
in the age range of 4 years to 5 years 11 months.

Part of the study involves a home visit, where, among many other activities, we 
videotape a 20 minute free play (we provide the toys)with
the foster mother and the child.  We are very interested in learning
from others who have conducted similar procedures with this age range of children, or 
who have used a coding system that could be used with this group of children.  

Specifically, we are interested in the following aspects
of the free play procedure:  1)  toys used; 2) length of free play;
3) setting in which free play occurred; 4) system for coding parent-child interaction.  
The content we are wanting to code for includes the attachment relationship between the 
mother and child, child
emotion (ex: ability to cope with frustration, respond to directives), 
as well as parent socioemotional functioning, such as the quality of 
their affect, any overt hostility, etc.  We are open to using a mix of
coding schemes to analyze our data.  

Do any of you know of any research/coding systems in this area?  We are
also quite interested in knowing with what kinds of populations and in what types of 
studies such procedures and systems have been used.  Any suggestions would be sincerely 
appreciated.  Thanks!