La misurazione del temperamento tramite l'Infant Behavior Questionnaire e il Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire-Supplemented di Rothbart

This study reports the results of a validation study conducted to evaluate the Italian version of two questionnaires designed to assess children's temperament in the first three years of life: the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ; Rothbart, 1981) and the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire-Supplemented (TBAQ-S; Rothbart, 2000). These scales are based on the conceptualization proposed by Rothbart (1989), who defines temperament as individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation. The IBQ includes six subscales measuring activity level, fear of novel stimuli, distress to limitations, smiling and laughter, and duration of orienting in infants aged 3-12 months, whereas the TBAQ-S contains 13 subscales developed by Rothbart and her associates to assess temperament in toddlerhood (12-36 months). Both questionnaires were translated into Italian and administered to 540 Italian mothers with children (253 boys, 271 girls) aged 3-36 months attending the public nursery schools in the city of Padua. The results show that 1) both questionnaires have good internal consistency, with Cronbach Alphas ranging from .63 to .79 and from .50 to .86 for the IBQ and the TBAQ-S, respectively; 2) intercorrelations among subscales are low to moderate in both the IBQ and the TBAQ-S ('monomethod' discriminant validity; Goldsmith, 1996); 3) children's age and gender significantly affect the expression of several temperamental characteristics. Overall, this study shows that the Italian version of the IBQ and the TBAQ-S may be considered as two psychometrically sound instruments to assess temperament in infants and toddlers.