Development of Short and Very Short Forms of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire

TLDR

The authors created short (94 items, 15 scales) and very short (36 items, 3 scales) versions of the CBQ by analyzing data from 468 parents for internal consistency, item breadth, factor structure, and missing data patterns, and then tested these forms with 1,189 participants. The short and very short CBQ forms showed satisfactory internal consistency, criterion validity, longitudinal stability, and cross‑informant agreement in mid/high‑income White samples, while internal consistency was somewhat lower in African American and low‑income groups for some scales; the very short form maintained acceptable internal consistency across all samples and fit a three‑factor model marginally.

Abstract

Abstract Using data from 468 parents and taking into account internal consistency, breadth of item content, within-scale factor analysis, and patterns of missing data, we developed short (94 items, 15 scales) and very short (36 items, 3 broad scales) forms of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001), a well-established parent-report measure of temperament for children aged 3 to 8 years. We subsequently evaluated the forms with data from 1,189 participants. In mid/high-income and White samples, the CBQ short and very short forms demonstrated both satisfactory internal consistency and criterion validity, and exhibited longitudinal stability and cross-informant agreement comparable to that of the standard CBQ. Internal consistency was somewhat lower among African American and low-income samples for some scales. Very short form scales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency for all samples, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated marginal fit of the very short form items to a three-factor model.