[Development and psychometric assessment of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire for Argentinean Children (CEA-N)]

A new measure of positive and negative alcohol expectancies for children aged 8 to 12 years was developed and validated. Study 1: 117 children answered a structured open-format question to provide information regarding the effects of alcohol use that they anticipate. The pool of items obtained was analyzed by a group of three experts according to the following criteria: item correspondence with two different theoretical models and item semantic clarity. Following analysis of the agreement between judges, a set of 55 items was obtained. Study 2: 209 children answered the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire for Children (CEA-N). Internal structure was analyzed through the use of exploratory factor analysis. A principal components analysis with oblimin rotation yielded a five-factor structure. The measure was found to demonstrate good internal consistency for the global and 'risk and aggression' scales, and moderate internal consistency for the remaining four scales: sociability, relaxation, courage and negative mood. These results indicate that the CEA-N is a valid and reliable measure for assessing alcohol expectancies in Argentinean children.