The Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised: Factor structure in a culturally and sociodemographically diverse sample in the United States

•The Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ-R) is a widely used temperament measure.•Recommended IBQ-R factors were derived in a sociodemographically homogenous sample.•The factor structure needs to be confirmed in sociodemographically diverse samples.•This study identified recommended factors, with adjustments, in a diverse sample.•More research is needed to ensure maximal validity of the IBQ-R in diverse samples.

The recommended factor structure for the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), a widely used parent-report measure of infant temperament, has limited empirical support. Moreover, the recommended factors were developed using homogenous samples not representative of current United States (U.S.) sociodemographics. The objective of this study was to examine the factor structure of the IBQ-R in a culturally and sociodemographically diverse U.S. cohort (N = 380 mother-infant dyads). Mothers were assessed during pregnancy on a range of cultural and sociodemographic characteristics and completed the IBQ-R when their infants were 6 months of age. The sample was diverse on maternal marital status, educational attainment, household income, race/ethnicity, primary language spoken, and country of birth. Initial confirmatory factor analysis for the recommended three-factor model yielded a poor fit. Modifications employed in other studies failed to improve model fit. An exploratory factor analysis revealed an acceptable model fit for a three-factor solution that showed similarities to as well as differences from the originally proposed factor structure. Additional analyses suggested lack of invariance on several factor and scale scores by maternal country of birth, race/ethnicity, and household income. The findings suggest that the commonly used IBQ-R factor structure may need to be adjusted for diverse samples and deserves further study.