Child Behavior Questionnaire-Short Form for Teachers: Informant Correspondences and Divergences

Discrepancies among independent sources of information about presumably identical constructs argue against reliance on a single perspective. To fill the need for temperament questionnaires for teacher and parent informants, we adapted the popular parent/caregiver Child Behavior Questionnaire-Short Form for preschool and kindergarten teachers. Informant correspondences were low as expected, but patterns were consistent with hypotheses drawn from person perception models. Internal consistencies of the teacher scales were adequate, comparing favorably with those of parent-rated scales. Anticipated relations of temperament scales emerged with social competence and tasks of executive attention for both parent and teacher informants. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted separately for parent and teacher scales supported the familiar three-factor model when allowances were made for cross-loadings and correlated errors. A multigroup confirmatory factor analyses with parent and teacher data indicated that the factor structures of the two questionnaires are similar but not equivalent.