INFANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE-REVISED: PILOT APPLICATION

Pacific Graduate School Of Psychology, Palo Alto CA

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Abstract

The proposed project will continue needed psychometric work with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R). It will also include development of laboratory measures, consistent with the new scales, and initiation of cross-cultural research using this instrument. The original IBQ has been one of the most frequently used measures of infant temperament since its introduction. The revised instrument was developed in order to provide the means for evaluating additional temperament variables, that have become important in light of ongoing research (High and Low Intensity Pleasure, Falling Reactivity, Perpetual Sensitivity, Cuddliness, Sadness, Approach). The proposed project will provide researchers with descriptive statistics for reference/comparison, including information for an urban and diverse sample of parents with infants between 3 and 12 months of age. A laboratory study will be conducted in order to pilot tasks assessing the same temperament dimensions as the new scales of the IBQ-R. A demonstration of convergence between the IBQ-R and laboratory measures would provide convincing evidence for the validity of the revised instrument, and minimize concerns regarding what has been described as a potential bias associated with parent-report. A longitudinal evaluation of the original sample, recruited in the initial development of the IBQ-R, will allow an assessment of predictive validity for this instrument. In addition, cross cultural work with the IBQ-R will also be initiated as a part of this project. This proposed project includes an evaluation of temperament in several samples of infants, allowing for a unique examination of Russian-American parents, and group of parents in Russia, and comparisons will be made in order to discern patterns of differences and similarities, taking into account the degree of acculturation for the Russian-American parents. This study will lay the groundwork for the utilization of the IBQ-R, especially the new scales, provide researchers with parallel laboratory assessments, and assess cross-cultural differences in parental report of temperament.