title: Deriving childhood temperament measures from emotion-eliciting behavioral episodes: scale construction and initial validation.
abstract: The authors describe the development and initial validation of a home-based version of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB), which was designed to assess childhood temperament with a comprehensive series of emotion-eliciting behavioral episodes. This article provides researchers with general guidelines for assessing specific behaviors using the Lab-TAB and for forming behavioral composites that correspond to commonly researched temperament dimensions. We used mother ratings and independent postvisit observer ratings to provide validity evidence in a community sample of 4.5-year-old children. 12 Lab-TAB behavioral episodes were employed, yielding 24 within-episode temperament components that collapsed into 9 higher level composites (Anger, Sadness, Fear, Shyness, Positive Expression, Approach, Active Engagement, Persistence, and Inhibitory Control). These dimensions of temperament are similar to those found in questionnaire-based assessments. Correlations among the 9 composites were low to moderate, suggesting relative independence. As expected, agreement between Lab-TAB measures and postvisit observer ratings was stronger than agreement between the Lab-TAB and mother questionnaire. However, for Active Engagement and Shyness, mother ratings did predict child behavior in the Lab-TAB quite well. Findings demonstrate the feasibility of emotion-eliciting temperament assessment methodologies, suggest appropriate methods for data aggregation into trait-level constructs and set some expectations for associations between Lab-TAB dimensions and the degree of cross-method convergence between the Lab-TAB and other commonly used temperament assessments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706-1611, USA. jgagne@wisc.edu
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Gagne
authors.forename: Carol A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Van Hulle
authors.forename: Nazan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Aksan
authors.forename: Marilyn J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Essex
authors.forename: H Hill
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Goldsmith
mesh_terms: D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000592:standards; D010555:Personality Inventory; D002666:Psychology, Child / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013694:Temperament