ERIC Number: EJ1041635
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1522-7227
EISSN: N/A
Measuring Epistemic Curiosity in Young Children
Piotrowski, Jessica Taylor; Litman, Jordan A.; Valkenburg, Patti
Infant and Child Development, v23 n5 p542-553 Sep-Oct 2014
Epistemic curiosity (EC) is the desire to obtain new knowledge capable of either producing positive experiences of intellectual interest (I-type) or of reducing undesirable conditions of informational deprivation (D-type). Although researchers acknowledge that there are individual differences in young children's epistemic curiosity, there are no existing measures to assess the I- and D-type constructs of EC in early childhood. The aim of this study was to develop and validate parent-report scales that reliably assessed early expressions of I- and D- type EC in young children. To develop the I/D-Young Children (I/D-YC) scales, 16 potential items were administered to 316 parents of children aged 3 to 8. These items were adaptations of an existing adult self-report measure of EC as well as newly developed items. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a 10-item 2-factor (5 I-type, 5 D-type) model had the best fit. Construct validity analyses and psychometric data indicated that our newly developed I/D-YC scales are valid and reliable measures of individual differences in early expressions of I- and D-type EC.
Descriptors: Epistemology, Personality Traits, Knowledge Level, Young Children, Evaluation Methods, Test Construction, Interests, Parents, Factor Analysis, Goodness of Fit, Test Validity, Psychometrics, Test Reliability, Individual Differences
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A