Psychometric Properties of the Very Short Form of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ): Investigation of Temperament at 3 to 7 Years

Background & temperament is defined as individual differences based on reactivity and self- regulation. This study aimed to investigate the reliability and validity of a very short form of the Children Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ) in an Iranian sample.
This study was a descriptive survey, which has applied the structural equation modeling. The statistical population of this study included all 3-7 years old children in Bandar Abbas city in 2016. The sample consisted of 276 children (124 boys and 156 girls) who were selected among children in three kindergartens and three preschool centers by cluster sampling method. The data collection tool was a very short version of the caregiver report (Mother) of the child behavior questionnaire (Rothbart, 2001), that was provided to mothers through teachers and they were asked to complete the child's behavior in the last 6 months. To analyze the data, Cronbach's alpha and split-half methods were used to investigate the reliability, and confirmatory factor analysis for evaluating the construct validity.
The results showed that a very short form of the child behavior questionnaire (CBQ) had a good internal consistency in the range of 0.71 to 0.79 for subscales and from 0.77 to 0.79 for the whole scale, and the fitness indicators derived from confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale had appropriate construct validity and all items had factor load higher than 0.30.
According to the results of this study and the importance of measuring the temperament in children and the lack of appropriate and valid tools in Iranian culture, it can be concluded that the child behavior questionnaire is an appropriate tool to measure temperament in 3-7 years old children.