Psychometric evaluation of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form in preschool children using parent and teacher report

Temperament is a developmentally important construct, hierarchically comprised of several lower-order dimensions subsumed under effortful control, negative affectivity, and surgency. The Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form (CBQ-VSF) was developed as a brief measure of the higher-order factors of temperament to aid researchers in understanding the relation between these factors and other developmentally important constructs. In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the CBQ-VSF in preschool children (N = 277) using teachers and parents as informants. Several dimensions of temperament emerged independently of the three higher-order factors. Comparing the extracted factors to other measures of temperament revealed limited convergent and discriminant validity. Further, similar teacher and parent report factors did not correlate. Based on these findings, it is suggested that the CBQ-VSF be refined to better reflect core dimensions that comprise the higher-order factors.

► Psychometrics of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form were examined.
► The expected factor structure was not found for parent or teacher reports.
► Similar parent and teacher factors did not correlate as expected.
► Limited validity was found for the extracted factors and the external constructs.