The CPAP-Q: A Q-Sort Assessment Procedure for assessing traits and emerging personality patterns in childhood

Different from psychopathological assessment, personality assessment considers an individual's entire range of functioning. The evaluation of personality during childhood is more complex than assessment in other life phases, but crucial for understanding the risk and protective factors for personality pathology. This paper has two main goals. The first goal is to describe the CPAP-Q, including its development and features. The CPAP-Q is a 200-item clinician-report tool that can be used by therapists of any orientation. The second goal is to provide additional preliminary data on the validity of the CPAP-Q.

A sample of 257 clinicians completed the CPAP-Q to assess the personality features of 257 children (aged 4-11 years) who had been in their care for 2-12 months. Clinicians also completed a clinical questionnaire to provide information on themselves, their child patients, and their patients' families; and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to evaluate patients' behavioral problems and social competencies.

The CPAP-Q seems to represent a useful assessment tool with good concurrent validity. Correlations between the CPAP-Q and the CBCL revealed strong convergent and divergent validity. Furthermore, the associations between personality prototypes and syndromic scales concurred with the clinical literature.

The CPAP-Q is a new tool for assessing child personality, from a clinical perspective. It is effective at identifying personality styles, even during childhood.