Human Development and Family Studies | Publicly Available Measures

Publicly Available Measures

Infant Crying Questionnaire

About the Questionnaire

The infant crying questionnaire was designed to assess mothers’ beliefs about infant crying.  There are three versions:

We have not used the final measure with fathers but believe it would be appropriate to do so based on a study with a preliminary version that involved both mothers and fathers (Leerkes, Parade & Burney, 2010).

The final measure includes five subscales, two of which are infant-oriented (Attachment and Crying as Communication) and three of which are parent-oriented (Minimization, Directive Control, and Spoiling).
Subscale item content is as follows:

  1. Attachment (8 items; e.g., I want to make baby feel secure/cared for)
  2. Minimization (9 items; I want baby to stop crying because I can’t get anything else done)
  3. Directive Control (8 items; e.g., I will teach baby how to get along with other people)
  4. Spoiling (3 items; e.g., how I respond when my baby cries could spoil my baby)
  5. Crying as Communication (3 items; e.g., think baby is trying to communicate with me)

The subscales can be retained, or can be averaged to yield overall infant-oriented and mother-oriented belief scales. Scoring instructions (docx) are the same for all versions.

In our research, infant-oriented beliefs have demonstrated predictive validity to maternal sensitivity and to child outcomes such as attachment security and adaptive emotion regulation behaviors (Leerkes, Gudmundson, & Burney, 2010, Leerkes et al., 2016), whereas mother-oriented beliefs demonstrate predictive validity to less sensitive maternal behavior and infant behavior problems (Haltigan et al., 2012; Leerkes et al., 2015, 2016).

Validation Paper:

Other Papers in Which We Used This Measure:

Papers Based on the Preliminary Version of the Measure:

Maternal (Non) Responsiveness Scale

About the Scale

The Maternal Responsiveness Scale was designed to assess how mothers respond to their infants, particularly when distressed, across a variety of situations. To date, we have used the measure with mothers of 6-month-old and 1-year-old infants. The measure yields 3 subscales:

  1. Responsiveness (25 items; e.g., “Mom busy, respond playfully if baby smiles or coos,” and “Mom busy, make point of interacting with baby every few minutes.”)
  2. Non-responsiveness (13 items; e.g., “Mom busy, let baby cry for a few minutes while finishing,” and “Baby afraid, let baby cry until stops crying on own.”)
  3. Delayed responsiveness (11 items; e.g., “Baby frustrated, let baby cry for a few seconds before responding” and “Baby night cry, let baby cry for a few minutes before responding”)

The non-responsiveness scale demonstrated the most consistent convergent validity with other parenting measures including observed sensitivity and predictive validity to child outcomes (Leerkes & Qu, 2017). Thus, we have made the full scale (docx) including all final subscales and a brief version including just the non-responsiveness (docx) scale available, along with scoring instructions (docx).

Validation paper:
Leerkes, E.M. & Qu, J. & (2017). The Maternal (Non) Responsiveness Questionnaire: A new self-report of parenting during infancy. Infant and Child Development, 26:e1992 DOI: 10.1002/icd.1992

My Emotions Questionnaire

The My Emotions Questionnaire (docx) was designed to assess mothers emotional reactions when their infants cry. To date, we have used the measure with mothers of 6-month and 1-year-old infants.

The measure yields 5 subscales with good internal consistency reliability: amusement, anxiety, frustration, sympathy and protective. Here are the available scoring instructions (docx). Amusement, frustration, and protectiveness demonstrated best predictive validity to parenting measures followed by anxiety.

Validation paper: Leerkes, E.M. & Qu, J. (in press). The My Emotions Questionnaire: A self-report of mothers’ emotional responses to infant crying. Infant Mental Health Journal.

Laboratory-Based Observational Measure of Young Children’s Learning Engagement

In most studies, young children’s learning engagement is measured via classroom observations or parental reports. We created laboratory tasks, and a coding scheme, to assess young children’s (preschool through first grade) learning engagement during a visual spatial task and a verbal task as described below:

Tangrams Task

This task assessed children’s learning engagement during a visual/spatial task. An experimenter provided children with instructions on how to fit five 3-dimensional wooden shapes into 2-dimensional pictures of shapes on a laminated piece of paper (e.g., by turning or flipping blocks as needed) and how to combine blocks to make larger shapes (e.g., how to make a square from two triangles) in the absence of internal guiding lines. Children were then presented with puzzles of increasing difficulty to work on independently.

Children were told to ask for help if needed, but minimal additional assistance was provided. Across prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade, the instruction phase of this task was altered slightly to match children’s developmental capabilities. The puzzles given to children to work on independently also changed and became more difficult across the three years. This task ended after 10 minutes or when the child completed the last puzzle.

Tangrams Protocols for:

Story-sequencing Task

This task assessed children’s learning engagement during a verbal task. An experimenter first demonstrated how to put picture cards in order from beginning, middle, to end in order to make a complete story and then instructed the child to complete subsequent stories on his or her own. In preschool, stories increased in difficulty in the following order: one story composed of three cards, two stories composed of three cards each, and one story composed of four cards. In kindergarten, children were first presented with a story composed of four cards, then two stories composed of four cards, then a story composed of five cards.

In first-grade, children were first given a set of five picture cards to put in order and then given a set of five cards with written statements that they needed to match to the pictures. Then, children were handed a set of five cards with no inherent sequence and told to put them in order based on a story the experimenter told the child verbally. Finally, children were handed a set of six picture cards and six corresponding word cards and told to put them both in order.

The training phase was also shortened and made more interactive for the first-grade visit to reflect children’s developmental capabilities and knowledge. This task ended after 8 minutes or when the child completed the last story.

Story Protocols for:

Coding scheme

Trained coders rated learning engagement on eight dimensions:

  1. Attention to instructions (attention to examiner and materials during initial description of task)
  2. On-task behavior (maintained focus and manipulation of materials)
  3. Enthusiasm/energy (quality of involvement with task)
  4. Persistence (whether engagement is maintained when the task becomes difficult)
  5. Monitoring progress/strategy use (awareness of progress and recognition of problems)
  6. Metacognitive talk (verbalizations about the task and self-talk)1
  7. Positive affect (pleasure or enjoyment)
  8. Negative affect (frustration, anger, annoyance, sadness, and boredom)

Codes were given on a 5-point scale with (1) indicating that the behavior described is not at all characteristic of the child’s behavior during the task, and (5) indicating that the child’s behavior is highly characteristic of the described behavior and consistent throughout the session.

1Metacognitive talk did not load on our learning engagement factor, and thus was not included in the scores we created. Thus, individuals may wish not to code this particular behavior.

Code books for:

Validation paper:
Halliday, S. E., Calkins, S. D., & Leerkes, E. M. (2018). Measuring preschool learning engagement in the laboratory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 167, 93-116.