The Stanford Preschool Internal-External Scale: extension to kindergarteners

To investigate whether the characteristics of the recently developed Stanford Preschool Internal-External Scale (SPIES; Mischel, Zeiss, & Zeiss, 1974) would remain stable for older children of apparently different socioeconomic status than the normative sample, the SPIES was administered to 104 kindergarteners of essentially middle class background in an ordinary elementary school. The findings indicate that the SPIES may be useful in research on perceived locus of control in kindergarteners as well as preschool children.