title: Promise of, problems with, and potential refinement of the "extremely short form of the CBQ": a comment on Sleddens, et al. (2012).
abstract: The extremely short (one item, three response options)temperament scale introduced by Sleddens, Hughes, O'Connor, Beltran, Baranowski, Nicklas, et al. (2012) is a valuable contribution that can be useful for future research and applications of temperament. Requiring parents to classify children as high on Effortful Control, Negative Affectivity, or Surgency/Extraversion, however, is counter to the dimensional approach through which these temperament factors were derived. This inappropriate imposition of a typology leads to a degree of imprecision in measurement that may have substantial practical implications. It is recommended that, instead, children be rated on each of these three dimensions. Alternatively, a single-item approach should include choices between groups identified through person-based analyses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bowdoin College, 6900 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011-8469, USA. sputnam@bowdoin.edu
authors.forename: Samuel P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Putnam
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000592:standards; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D013694:Temperament / Q000502:physiology*