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The most common method of collecting data on children’s self-regulation skills is through parent report (usually mother), with carer and teacher report also used at times. Table 2.1 details the parent-, carer- and teacher-report measures used in the literature reviewed. Some studies have used these alone (e.g., Kim & Deater‐Deckard, 2011) or in combination with other types of measures such as laboratory assessments (e.g., Olson et al., 2011). Most of the measures used stem from the temperament paradigm with the Infant, Early Childhood and Childhood Behaviour Questionnaires developed by Rothbart and colleagues prominent (Rothbart, 1981; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001).

The Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ) is widely used and is designed for children from 3 to 7 years of age. It consists of 15 scales, loading on to three factors (negative affectivity, extraversion / surgency and effortful control). The effortful control factor is most commonly used to measure self-regulation and includes the following scales (examples provided): attentional focussing (“when picking up toys usually keeps at the task until it’s done”); inhibitory control (“can lower his/her voice when asked to do so”); low intensity pleasure (“rarely enjoys just being talked to”); perceptual sensitivity (“notices the smoothness or roughness of objects s/he touches”); smiling / laughter (“laughs a lot at jokes and silly happenings”; Rothbart et al., 2001). These do appear to widely represent the three broad domains of self-regulation previously

28 discussed: behavioural regulation (i.e., inhibitory control), emotional regulation (i.e., smiling / laughter), and cognitive regulation (i.e., attentional focussing).

In the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ; Rothbart, 1981), designed for children aged up to 12 months, the six scales do not as clearly tap self-regulation, and certainly not each of the three broad dimensions of self-regulation, perhaps due to the difficulty in measuring these constructs at such an early age. Cognitive regulation is somewhat tapped by the scale duration of orienting (the child’s attention on a single object for an extended period of time when there are no sudden changes in stimulation). Emotional regulation is tapped by the smiling / laughter scale as per the CBQ, but behavioural regulation does not appear to be well measured in the IBQ. The original tested version of the IBQ drew from the work of Thomas and Chess (1977) and included a rhythmicity scale which attempted to measure the rhythmicity of sleep and hunger cycles and bowel movements, however this was dropped from the IBQ when it was found to have unsatisfactory internal reliability.

A second group of temperament measures developed by Sanson and colleagues do include Thomas and Chess’s (1977) rhythmicity scale. The Revised Infant

Temperament Questionnaire, Toddler Temperament Scale and Child Temperament Questionnaire (Prior, Sanson, Oberklaid, & Northam, 1987; Sanson, Prior, Garino, & Oberklaid, 1987; Sanson, Smart, Prior, Oberklaid, & Pedlow, 1994) have found and used a five factor approach to temperament that does include rhythmicity and so could be construed as measuring behavioural regulation. However the authors themselves consider the rhythmicity scale to reflect the broad temperament dimension of reactivity, along with the scales of irritability, cooperation, and activity at various age points (Sanson et al., 2009). It could be considered that a number of these scales would provide early indications of emotional regulation, given that emotional regulation is considered to comprise of elements of both reactivity and regulation of emotion (Blair et al., 2010). So in this group of measures, both emotional regulation and behavioural regulation may be represented, but are not clearly defined as such, while the persistence and distractibility scales included from age one, clearly tap cognitive regulation.

Other parent-, teacher- and carer-report items used stem from the developmental psychopathology and education fields and include the impulsivity scale of the ADHD Rating Scale (DuPaul, Power, Anastopoulos, & Reid, 1998), the Behaviour Problems

29 Index (Peterson & Zill, 1986), the Emotional Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) and the Social Skills Rating System (Gresham & Elliot, 1990). The use of these measures which appear at face value to measure outcomes for children, highlights the inherent difficulties in measuring and studying self-regulation which arise due to the conceptual, theoretical and measurement overlap between self-regulation and

internalising and externalising behaviour problems. For example Kim and Deater- Deckard (2011) used items related to inattention from the Child Behaviour Checklist as a measure of self-regulation (positioned as a moderator between dispositional anger and outcomes), while simultaneously using the same instrument to measure behavioural and emotional problems (outcome measures). Ramani and colleagues (2010) used various scales of the Social Skills Rating System as measures of self-regulation (predictor) and a measure of competence with peers (an outcome measure) within the one study. These researchers also used items that might be considered to be behavioural outcomes such as defiance and compliance to index dysregulation and regulation respectively. The CBQ has also recently been used as both an indicator of self-regulation skills (situated as a predictor; Olson et al., 2011) and as an outcome measure (anxiety problems) when lab tests were used to measure self-regulation as the predictor (White, McDermott, Degnan, Henderson, & Fox, 2011). Calkins (2004) understands these measurement issues by conceptualising behaviour problems (consistently linked with aspects of early

temperament) as simply distal indices of self-regulation, rather than as distinct from the dimension of self-regulation itself.

One approach to overcoming such measurement issues adopted by some researchers has been to have an expert panel comment on the face validity of items in the measure in terms of what they are most accurately tapping, and then removing all items that could be confounded on the predictor / outcome side (Belsky et al., 2007). Kim and Deater-Deckard (2011) also took a noteworthy approach to developing a measurement model for self-regulation by selecting items from a number of established measures, based on their face validity in tapping their constructs of interest, inattention and anger. It appears then that there is not one measure that comes even close to perfectly representing self-regulation across all its domains from infancy to middle childhood. Rather, researchers must choose the measures that most parsimoniously and reliably reflect their theoretical and conceptual position on self-regulation and meet the requirements of their research goals and characteristics of their research participants.

30 Using parental-report measures only is often cited as a limitation in various studies (Blandon, Calkins & Keane, 2010; Pesonen et al., 2008). This is due to the fact that issues of single-rater bias may be introduced, and that the objectivity of parents’ observations of their child may come into question. Some researchers have found correlations between maternal report of child temperament and self-regulation with laboratory measures to be non-significant (Seifer, Sameroff, Dickstein, Schiller, & Hayden, 2004; White et al., 2011), suggesting that either there is significant bias and measurement error present in maternal report, or that the parental report and laboratory measures are in fact tapping different aspects of self-regulation, as suggested by White and colleagues (2011). Others have found support for the validity of parent-report measures. For example, Pauli-Pott and colleagues found that maternal report on the IBQ strongly predicted infants’ observed temperamental characteristics four months later (Pauli-Pott, Mertesacker, Bade, Haverkock, & Beckmann, 2003). Overall, multi-method measurement designs are considered to be a stronger research design (Eisenberg et al., 2011), with the use of parent-report measures only considered a limitation to be acknowledged and addressed. However parent-report measures have the benefits of being simple to administer and lower in resource and time requirements than other measures such as laboratory assessments

31 Table 2.1 Parent-, carer- and teacher- report measures of self-regulation

Ages used

Measure Self-regulation

aspect measured

Example items Example papers from

systematic review

5 – 56 months

Interview with Paediatrician Regulatory problems

Crying, eating and sleeping problems as reported by parents. Regulatory problems score computed.

Schmid et al., 2010

0 – 3 years

Infant Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ)

(Rothbart, 1981) and

Infant Behaviour Questionnaire Revised

(IBQ-R) (Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003)

Effortful control, attentional control, orienting

regulation, duration of orienting

Mothers indicate on a 7-point scale how frequently their infants respond to specific events by fussing, crying, or no reaction during the previous week (e.g., when placed in a car seat—limits, or when exposed to a loud noise—novelty). Bridgett, et al., 2011; Crockenberg, Leerkes, & Jó, 2008; Pesonen et al., 2008 Birth to age 1

Revised Infant Temperament Questionnaire (RITQ) (Carey & McDevitt, 1978)

Attention regulation Parent rates on a 6-point scale the degree to which children display behaviours (from almost never to almost always) e.g. Plays with toy for over one minute (infant); stays with a routine task (dressing, picking up toys) for 5 minutes or more (toddler); likes to complete one task or activity before going on to the next (child)

Sanson et al., 2009 1 – 3

years

Toddler Temperament Scale (TTS) (Fullard,

McDevitt, & Carey, 1978) ≥ 3

years

Child Temperament Questionnaire (CTQ)

(Thomas & Chess, 1977)

2 – 5years

ADHD Rating Scale (DuPaul et al., 1998) Inattention; reactive control

The impulsivity items include ‘blurts out answers’, ‘difficulty awaiting turn’, and ‘interrupts/intrudes on others’. Mothers rate the frequency (ranging from never to always) with which they observe their children engage in each item asked.

Hill et al., 2006; Graziano et al., 2010

3 – 7 years

Child Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ)

(Rothbart et al., 2001)

Effortful control; inhibitory control

‘Sits still when told’, ‘lowers one’s voice’, ‘stops activities when asked’. Response scale as per IBQ.

Bridgett et al., 2011; Olson et al., 2011; 18

months – 3 yrs

Early Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire

(ECBQ) (Putnam, Gartstein, & Rothbart, 2006)

Effortful control; orienting regulation & duration of orienting

Parents rate on a 7-point Likert-style format ranging from never to always the frequency of specific child behaviours (e.g., how often did your child ‘sit quietly and watch’; ‘become sadly tearful’) in various contexts (e.g., ‘When being dressed or undressed’, ‘When playing outdoors’, ‘When told no’)

Bridgett et al., 2011; Eisenberg et al., 2010; Pesonen et al., 2008

4.5 – 8.5

Behaviour Problems Index (Peterson & Zill,

1990)

Self-regulation Mothers reported how well each item described their child’s behaviour in the last 3 months, using a 3-point

Colman, Hardy, Albert, Raffaelli, & Crockett,

32

Ages used

Measure Self-regulation

aspect measured

Example items Example papers from

systematic review

years scale: 1 (often true), 2 (sometimes true) and 3 (not true). For e.g. ‘he/she has sudden changes in mood or feeling’ (affect regulation); ‘he/she has difficulty concentrating’’ (attention regulation); ‘he/she is restless or overly active, cannot sit still’ (behavioural regulation).

2006

≥ 2 years

Emotional Regulation Checklist (Shields &

Cicchetti, 1997)

Emotional regulation

23 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale indicating how frequently the behaviours occur. Emotion regulation subscale: e.g. ‘displays appropriate negative affect in response to hostile, aggressive or intrusive play’ and ‘is a cheerful child’. Negativity subscale: ‘exhibits wide mood swings and ‘is easily frustrated’.

Blandon, Calkins, Grimm, Keane, & O'Brien, 2010; Blandon, Calkins & Keane, 2010; Blandon et al., 2008; Brown, 2010

54 months

Social Skills Rating System (SSRS; Gresham

& Elliot, 1990).

Regulation (compliance); dysregulation (defiance)

Maternal Compliance Ratings subscale: follows your instructions, attends to your instructions, and follows household rules ; The Maternal Defiance Ratings subscale: controls temper in conflict situations with you, disobeys rules or requests, ends disagreements with you calmly

Ramani et al., 2010

4.5 - 11 years

Mother , father and teacher report on items with face validity related to attention from:

Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL); Teacher Report Form (TRF;Achenbach, 1999); CBQ

(attentional focusing subscale); Social Skills

Rating System (SSRS, Gresham & Elliott,

1990)- 1 parent-rated and 1 teacher-rated item

Inattention CBCL and TRF: can’t concentrate, fails to carry out assigned tasks, inattentive

CBQ: attentional focussing subscale

SSRS: completes tasks within a reasonable time; attends to instructions

Kim & Deater‐ Deckard, 2011

33