Abstract

This study reports the results of a validation 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. 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.