Assessing perfectionism in children and adolescents: Psychometric properties of the Almost Perfect Scale Revised

The main goal of the present study was to study perfectionism through the psychometric properties of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R) in a representative sample of children and adolescents. The sample encompassed n = 1476 students from 9 to 16 years-old (M = 12.29 years; SD = 2.17). Analysis of the internal structure by means of exploratory factor analysis, yielded a three-dimensional solution (Discrepancy, Order, and Standards). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) showed that the three-factor model displayed better goodness-of-fit indices than the competing models tested. Multigroup CFAs showed that the three-factor model had strong measurement invariance across gender and partial strong invariance across age. Significant statistical differences in the mean scores of the APS-R were found by gender and age. The level of internal consistency for the APS-R scores ranged from 0.81 to 0.89. The study of the psychometric properties of the APS-R scores supports the notion that it is a useful tool for the assessment of perfectionism in children and adolescents. The results have clear implications for the understanding of the expression of perfectionism and provide new sources of validity evidence for the APS-R in educational settings.