A psychometric evaluation of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ) in a Swedish sample

Personality is generally considered to be biologically founded in temperament, and temperamental qualities have proven to be relatively stable across childhood and into adulthood (Caspi, Roberts & Shiner,). Temperament predicts important developmental outcomes such as academic performance (Muris,), and social functioning (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie & Reiser,), and it has also been found to be strongly related to the etiology and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in children (Muris, Meesters & Blijlevens,; Nigg,). To allow for the possibility of making early interventions, identification of potential risk factors (such as temperamental dispositions) is of great importance (Rettew & McKee,). As temperament is multidimensional and has many different manifestations, parents and teachers are valuable sources in providing information about children's temperament (Rothbart & Bates,; Tackett, Slobodskaya, Mar et al.,), and caregiver questionnaires are frequently used in child personality research. However, such questionnaires are only useful if their reliability and validity have been established. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ; Simonds, Kieras, Rueda & Rothbart,), which focuses specifically on the ages between 7 and 11 years. The TMCQ is the least validated of the Rothbart measures, and although reliability data have been presented, together with some validity data, for a computerized self-report version of the questionnaire (Simonds & Rothbart,), information about the reliability and validity for the caregiver version is scant. In the present paper, we report such data for a Swedish sample.