The home observation or measurement of the environment (HOME) inventory is designed to measure the quality and quantity of support, structure, and stimulation available to a child in the child's home setting. It attempts to document the extent to which a child's environment contains experiences that promote the child's well-being and does not contain experiences that are inimical to well-being. There are cultural differences in the patterns of relations observed, both with respect to overall strength and with respect to particular scales on HOME. Differences in parental beliefs about child rearing likely mediate some of the relations. HOME was used as an outcome measure in programs designed to assist parents of children born with medical problems. Some home environment measures use as an organizing principle family activities. Among these are broadly focused measures such as might be used in ethnographic research and some are narrowly focused on parent-child joint activities.