Checklist of Trait Names scale

Abstract

The Checklist of Trait Names (CTN), developed by Davidson and Lang in 1960, is a specialized psychological scale designed to measure how children perceive their teachers’ emotional attitudes toward them. This perception is then analyzed for its relationship with the student’s self-perception, academic achievement, and classroom behavior. The instrument originally utilized 35 bipolar adjective pairs, requiring students in grades 4 through 6 to rate their teacher’s perceived feelings using a 5-step continuum (A through E). The final, validated version of the instrument employed 30 of these adjective pairs, demonstrating strong evidence of both reliability and validity during its initial development.

Keywords

Academic Achievement, Student’s Perception, Classroom Behavior, Concurrent Validity, Self-Perception, Checklist of Trait Names, Test Development, Test-Retest Reliability, Teacher Expectation, Student Attitudes toward Teacher Expectations

Authors

Davidson, Helen H., Lang, Gerhard

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Checklist of Trait Names (CTN) is twofold. First, it serves as a diagnostic tool to systematically assess the complex ways in which school-age children interpret and internalize their teachers’ feelings and attitudes directed toward them. Understanding these perceived attitudes is crucial because they form the basis of the student-teacher relationship.

Secondly, the research utilizing the CTN sought to empirically explore the hypothesized correlations between these student perceptions and key developmental and educational outcomes. Specifically, the scale was designed to facilitate research linking perceived teacher expectations to the child’s sense of self-perception, their performance in academic achievement metrics, and observable classroom behavior.

Construct

The CTN measures the construct defined as Student Attitudes toward Teacher Expectations. This construct operates on the premise that a student’s belief about how their teacher views them (e.g., as capable, obedient, or challenging) significantly influences their subsequent cognitive and behavioral responses in the school environment.

The scale captures the emotional and evaluative component of this relationship, moving beyond simple satisfaction ratings to gauge the perceived attribution of personality traits (e.g., “selfish/unselfish”) that the teacher supposedly assigns to the student. This focus allows researchers to study the effects of perceived positive or negative teacher expectations.

Validity

The initial development study established the validity of the CTN primarily through the examination of concurrent validity. This method involved correlating the total score derived from the checklist with scores from an established, modified external measure.

Specifically, the total CTN score was correlated with results from a modified version of the Teacher Approval and Disapproval Scale. The resulting correlation coefficient was 0.51, which is considered a moderately strong relationship, providing evidence that the CTN measures a similar underlying construct related to the student’s perception of teacher feedback and affect.

Reliability

The reliability of the Checklist of Trait Names was assessed using the test-retest reliability method. This involved administering the scale to the same cohort of students on two separate occasions.

The interval between the two administrations was maintained between four and six weeks. A high correlation coefficient of 0.85 was obtained between the initial test scores and the retest scores. This result indicates strong temporal stability, confirming that the CTN provides consistent measurements over a short period.

Factor Analysis

Information regarding the specific factor structure or detailed factor analysis of the Checklist of Trait Names (Davidson & Lang, 1960) is not explicitly detailed in the original summary documentation. While the use of 30 final adjectives suggests underlying dimensions were likely explored during the reduction from the initial 35 pairs, these specific factors or dimensions are not reported here.

Future research or detailed methodological papers associated with the 1960 study would be required to fully elucidate the internal dimensional structure of the scale and confirm if the trait names clustered into distinct factors related to different aspects of perceived teacher attitudes.

Instrument

Test Type: Checklist

Format: The checklist consists of 35 bipolar adjective pairs. Each pair includes opposite adjectives, with 5 steps between them (A, B, C, D, and E) to indicate how closely students feel the adjectives describe their teacher’s attitude toward them. The final, validated form used 30 adjective pairs.

Language Available: English (U.S.)

Population Group: School Age Children

Age Group: Childhood (birth-12 yrs); specifically School Age (6-12 yrs)

Population Details: The initial sample consisted of U.S. students enrolled in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, including both male and female participants.

Test Methodology: Self-report checklist format requiring students to rate perceived teacher attitudes.

Keywords

Teacher Expectation, Student Perception, Academic Achievement, Self-Perception, Classroom Behavior, Psychological Assessment, Scale Development, Educational Psychology, Student-Teacher Relationship, Test-Retest Reliability

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not available in source documentation.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not available in source documentation.

Correspondence Address: Not available in source documentation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was initially published in 1960. Specific details regarding current licensing, fees, or permissions for the Checklist of Trait Names are not provided in the original summary. Researchers should consult the original publication through the American Psychological Association (APA) to determine current usage rights.

The DOI for the scale entry is https://doi.org/10.1037/t54637-000.

Reference’s

Davidson, H. H., & Lang, G. (1960). Children’s perceptions of their teachers’ feelings toward them related to self-perception, school achievement and behavior. Journal of Experimental Education, 29(2), 107-118. DOI: 10.1080/00220973.1960.10805500

The scale entry is also cataloged under DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/t54637-000.

Items of the Checklist of Trait Names scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The specific list of the 35 (or final 30) bipolar adjective pairs used in the Checklist of Trait Names (e.g., “selfish/unselfish,” “obedient/disobedient”) is not provided in the source content table. Researchers must refer to the original publication (Davidson & Lang, 1960) for the complete list of scale items.