Psychometric properties of the early prosocial behaviour questionnaire

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a parent report questionnaire that assesses three different domains of early prosocial behaviour, namely helping, comforting and sharing. Participants were 202 German mothers with children at the ages of 18 and 30 months. Results showed that a three-factor model (representing the three domains of prosocial behaviour) fitted the data more accurately than a single-factor model. Longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis revealed configural and metric invariance of the three-factor model over measurement occasions and, furthermore, analysis of the factor variances and covariances yielded equivalent structural relations between factors across age. These findings legitimize the use of the questionnaire for mean comparison analysis and longitudinal change assessments.

Keywords:

• Domains of prosocial behaviour
• prosocial questionnaire
• toddlerhood
• helping
• sharing
• comforting

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Laura Martin, Katharina Maria Bader, Juliane Goll, Eva Strehlke, Anna Lena Platzbecker, Julia Emtmann, and Jana Corinna Bauer, who were involved in the collection and entry of the data. We specially wish to thank the families who contributed with their time and effort to this study.