Interpersonal traits in childhood: Development of the Child and Adolescent Interpersonal Survey

The Child and Adolescent Interpersonal Survey (CAIS) consists of interpersonal trait descriptions that were generated to represent the constructs of the Interpersonal Circumplex model utilizing language accessible to children in a brief self-report format. Scale development entailed examining the structure at the item and scale levels with a sample of children (fourth and sixth graders) and at the scale level with college students. Internal consistency estimates for the majority of the CAIS scales were adequate given the brevity of the scales. The fits to the circular order model for the CAIS were very well supported across the child and adult samples, with no significant differences in the fit of the model across these samples. Generally strong associations were found between corresponding scales of the CAIS and the Interpersonal Adjective Scales in a college sample, and there were many structural similarities between these measures. For the child sample, the CAIS scales of Gregarious-Extraverted and Warm-Agreeable related strongly to corresponding Five-factor scales, and remaining scales related minimally to moderately.