Evaluation of a puppet interview to measure young children's self-reports of temperament

Summary

Structured child self-report measures are rarely used in the clinical assessment of children under the age of 7 to 8 years. This study developed and evaluated a puppet-based interview allowing young children to self-report temperamental traits, adapting items from the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory and testing two groups of 4- to 5-year-olds alongside independent behavioural observations. The interview showed moderate internal consistency and stability. Agreement between children's self-reports and parent or teacher ratings was low, although agreement between the adult raters themselves was comparable. The authors conclude that the puppet interview format shows promise for extending self-report below age 7, while illustrating the difficulties of placing young children's self-report within a multi-informant clinical framework.

Editorial summary, not the publisher’s abstract. Read the abstract of record (opens in a new tab)

Publication note

Not a BPI study. Included because it independently applies the paired-puppet self-report format to a different construct, temperament, which speaks to whether the method generalises beyond the BPI's original domains.

Relevance

Keywords

Publication details

Volume

21

Issue

1

Pages

37-56

Rights

Australian Academic Press / Cambridge University Press

Citation

Janet H. Roth, Mark R. Dadds, John McAloon (2004). Evaluation of a puppet interview to measure young children's self-reports of temperament.Behaviour Change 21(1), 37-56 https://doi.org/10.1375/bech.21.1.37.35973