Minimizing gender differences in children's interest assessment: Development of the Inventory of Children's Activities-3 (ICA-3)

•The Inventory of Children's Activities–Revised was revised so as to minimize gender differences.•Results support the comparable reliability and validity of the revision.•There were small gender differences in the new version especially in S and I scales.•The new version (ICA-3) is recommended for use with children.

The focus of this study was on revising the Inventory of Children's Activities–Revised (ICA-R; Tracey & Ward, 1998) to enhance its psychometric properties while minimizing gender differences in scale scores. The original 30 ICA-R items and an additional 30 items were administered to 70,280 fifth-eighth grades students. The original scoring was compared to a revised scoring method based solely on the empirically best items and a scoring method balancing empirical scoring with minimizing gender differences. All three item sets (original, empirical, and combined empirical/gender balancing) resulted in strong internal consistency estimates and adequate fit to the circular structure, yet the combined empirical/gender method had much lower gender differences especially for the scales measuring Investigative and Social interests. The implications of using the revised scale with children is discussed.