Notes for Chap 1. TESTING IN EDUCATIONAL SETTING

1.4  Personality and interest inventories-

CHILDRENS PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE (CPQ)

Description Of Children Personality Questionnaire (CPQ)

A self-report personality test for children from ages 8 to 12.

• Developed by Rutherford Burchard Porter  & Raymond B. Cattell (1956)
• It can be used to measure their personal, social, and academic development and aspects of their personality that mediates performance in school and social adjustment both inside and outside the classroom.
• The test measures 14 dimensions of personality in children. The 14 dimensions of personality that are being measured were identified by, R.B. Cattell, who noted that they were objectively determined source traits
• There are four forms of the CPQ test available (A, B, C, and D). There are 140 items in each form carrying 10 items per factor per form. Each form is broken down into two parts. Thus form A is made up of Part A1 and A2, each consisting of 70 items. Similar divisions are made for forms B, C and D.
• Each item (except the factor B, intelligence, items) has a forced-choice, “yes” or “no” answer.
• The items were constructed to be as “neutral” as possible with regard to social desirability.
• It is designed to require only a normal reading vocabulary of an average child of eight.
• The test is administered without a time limit and for younger children, the testing time can be into two parts for a given form, however, one test session should not exceed 50 minutes.
   

WHAT THE TEST MEASURES

A set of 14 factorially independent dimensions of personality in children. They are as follows:

PRIMARY SOURCE TRAITS MEASURED BY CPQ

PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES

RELIABILITY

• Test-retest reliability after a one-week interval for each of the 14 factors on the various test forms ranges from .28-.87 .
• The Kuder-Richardson Formula 21 shows internal consistencies ranging from .32-.86 with clustering in the .70s.

VALIDITY

Construct validity has been established and its validity indicates both the goodness of to hypothesized structure of personality and adequacy of the measures of each construct.

SCORING OF THE TEST

• Separate stencils are available for scoring the answer sheet
• Two stencils are required to obtain the 14 raw scores from each of the test forms.
• Separate norms table are provided for boys and girls.

NORMS

There are 3 methods of converting raw scores into standard scores.

1. S stens (standard deviation stens)
2. N stens (normalized stens)
3. Percentile Ranks

Separate norms table are provided in the manual. Both combined and separate Norms for girls and boys are available due to clear cut personality differences.

APPLICATIONS AND USES OF THE TEST

• To gain a greater understanding of those children whose educational progress is clearly being affected by personality problems.
• To screen out for individual attention and guide those children who need help with emotional conflicts and behaviour disorders. Due to this earlier recognition, many behaviour difficulties can be avoided or handled before they become defensive habits and other complications resistive to treatment.
• To aid the student in making decisions about future educational and vocational goals
• Future school achievement and creativity can be more exactly predicted and understood when appropriately weighted personality measures are used.
• To encourage the keeping of meaningful developmental records for children. Clinical practice and work with delinquents and children courts all require a diagnostic instrument which operates with these basic personality concepts.
• To measure the progressive development of character and personality. If the schools keep test and criterion records of levels on emotional maturity, self-control, anxiety level, the capacity to concentrate, social learning, and other such traits, these qualities may eventually receive as much intelligent attention as is now directed to academic grades.
• It can be conveniently applied either as an individual test, in the clinic or a group test in the classroom.
• In general, it useful in evaluating, understanding, and predicting personal adjustment, social development, and academic performance.

Critical Analysis

• The CPQ includes all of the more adequately research demonstrated dimensions of personality from the general personality sphere and thus has wide applicability in both clinical and educational settings. It provides us with more broad and specific measures of personality in terms of an individual’s characteristics.
• However, the standardization sample has not been described in sufficient detail for objective evaluation, and that the handbook is also unclear as to when the data was collected.
• There is very little data to guide the interpretation of test score profiles. Also, the scoring and administration can be very tedious considering the items and time for separate test sessions.
• A reexamination of the validity of the Children’s Personality Questionnaire must be done according to its reviewers since its factors were not found to correlate significantly with those it is supposed to measure.
• Thus the test also needs a lot of revision and modification as the results of new research provide even more valid estimates and better psychological understanding of higher-order personality structure in young children.