Seattle Personality Questionnaire – Original

Abstract

The Seattle Personality Questionnaire – Original (SPQ) is a 44-item self-report measure developed primarily for use with young school-aged children, typically administered during Grade 2 or Year 3 of schooling. The instrument is designed to assess key indicators of psychological adjustment and behavioral difficulties in this developmental cohort. Its structure integrates items derived from the foundational Seattle Personality Questionnaire for Young School-Aged Children (Kusche, Greenberg, and Beilke, 1988) and established measures of school adjustment.

The SPQ is structured to measure six critical domains: three core dimensions of symptomatology (anxiety, conduct problems, and somatization), as well as depression, school dislike, and a dedicated lie scale used to monitor response validity and bias. This comprehensive scope makes the SPQ a valuable tool for large-scale longitudinal research, such as the Fast Track Project, focusing on the early trajectories of behavioral and emotional problems.

Keywords

Seattle Personality Questionnaire, SPQ, child assessment, school-aged children, anxiety, conduct problems, somatization, depression, school dislike, lie scale, Fast Track Project, self-report.

Authors

C. A. Kusche, M. T. Greenberg, R. Beilke, S. Asher, S. Hymel, P. Renshaw, V. Wheeler, G. Ladd.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Seattle Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) is the early identification and systematic measurement of internalizing and externalizing problems in young children within an educational context. It functions as a multi-dimensional screening tool designed to capture emotional distress, behavioral deviations, and overall school adjustment difficulties at a critical developmental stage.

The SPQ was utilized extensively within major research initiatives, notably the Fast Track Project, to allow researchers to longitudinally track the manifestation and severity of problematic behaviors and emotional states, such as anxiety and conduct problems, starting in the early elementary school years. The instrument’s unique contribution is its integration of clinical symptom measures with social adjustment indicators, providing a holistic view of the child’s functioning in the school environment.

Construct

The SPQ is a multi-dimensional instrument measuring six distinct, yet often related, psychological and behavioral constructs. These constructs are grouped into core areas of psychopathology and validity checking:

• Symptomatology Dimensions: This core cluster includes anxiety (measuring fearfulness, worry, and avoidance), conduct problems (measuring rule-breaking, aggression, and oppositional behavior), and somatization (measuring physical complaints, such as headaches or stomach aches, often linked to psychological distress).
• Internalizing Distress: A dedicated scale for depression assesses feelings of unhappiness, self-pity, sadness, and anhedonia (lack of enjoyment).
• School Adjustment: The school dislike scale incorporates items borrowed from the School Loneliness and School Sentiment scales. This factor captures feelings of isolation, peer rejection, difficulty making friends, and general negative attitudes toward the educational setting.
• Response Bias: A crucial lie scale is included, derived from the original Seattle Personality Questionnaire for Young School-Aged Children, to detect response sets, such as exaggerated positive self-presentation or acquiescence, thereby ensuring the validity and honesty of the child’s self-report data.

Validity

While specific psychometric validation data for the 44-item SPQ (Grade 2/Year 3 version) are detailed in technical reports (e.g., Greenberg & Lengua, 1995), the scale benefits from high initial content validity due to its reliance on established measures. The core symptomatology and lie items were adapted directly from the well-documented Seattle Personality Questionnaire for Young School-Aged Children (Kusche, Greenberg, and Beilke, 1988), which has been widely used in developmental psychology research.

Furthermore, the subscales assessing school adjustment demonstrate strong construct validity, as they borrow items from instruments already validated for use with children, specifically the School Loneliness scale (Asher, Hymel, & Renshaw, 1984; Asher & Wheeler, 1985) and the School Sentiment scale (Ladd, 1990). This composite approach ensures that the SPQ accurately targets specific, recognized domains of child adjustment and psychopathology.

Reliability

As a key instrument within the longitudinal Fast Track Project, the SPQ’s subscales are expected to demonstrate robust internal consistency and stability over time. Technical reports associated with the scale’s development (Greenberg & Lengua, 1995) provide details regarding the internal reliability (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha coefficients) for the derived subscales, including those measuring anxiety, conduct problems, somatization, and depression.

The multi-item structure designed to assess each dimension helps mitigate measurement error inherent in assessing young children, thereby supporting the scale’s overall reliability in capturing consistent patterns of emotional and behavioral functioning via self-report.

Factor Analysis

The clear structural delineation of the SPQ into six distinct scales (anxiety, conduct problems, somatization, depression, school dislike, and lie) indicates that the instrument underwent thorough factor analysis during its construction. These analyses, likely a combination of exploratory and confirmatory techniques, were essential to confirm that the 44 items grouped empirically according to the six intended conceptual constructs.

The factor structure confirms the independence of the primary psychopathological dimensions, ensuring that, for instance, items related to somatization do not unduly overlap with those related to depression, thereby enhancing the utility of the scale for differential diagnosis and targeted intervention planning.

Instrument

Test Type: Personality Questionnaire / Self-Report Screening Tool

Format: 44 items. The original Grade 2/Year 3 administration utilized a response format suitable for young readers. By Year 4, the response scale was standardized to 5 points: 0=almost never, 1=sometimes true, 2=often true, 3=almost always, and 4=don’t know/no response. This modification provided greater sensitivity in measuring symptom severity.

Language Available: English

Population Group: School-aged children.

Age Group: Primarily used for children in Grade 2 or Year 3, generally corresponding to ages 7 to 8, though the base scale covers ages 6 through 10.

Population Details: Utilized extensively in prevention science and developmental psychopathology research, particularly within the longitudinal framework of the Fast Track Project.

Test Methodology: Self-report questionnaire completed by the target child.

Keywords

Child development, psychopathology, longitudinal study, self-report, internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, school adjustment, clinical assessment, behavioral screening.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: N/A (Original scale development associated with the University of Washington, Department of Psychology, Seattle.)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Seattle Personality Questionnaire—Original was developed for and administered within the context of academic research, specifically the Fast Track Project, starting around Grade 2/Year 3 of the study. Specific commercial fees are not generally associated with this instrument, but researchers seeking to use the scale must obtain permission from the Fast Track Project organization.

The full instrument and technical details are available in the associated technical reports. The original PDF technical report describing this instrument can be downloaded here: http://www.fasttrackproject.org/techrept/s/spq/spq3tech.pdf

Reference’s

The SPQ integrates and builds upon several key instruments and reports:

• Asher‚ S.‚ Hymel‚ S.‚ & Renshaw‚ P. (1984). Loneliness in children. Child Development‚ 55‚ 1456-1464.
• Asher‚ S. & Wheeler‚ V. (1985). Children’s loneliness: A comparison of rejected and neglected peer status. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology‚ 53‚ 500-505.
• Kusche‚ C.A.‚ Greenberg‚ M.T.‚ and Beilke‚ R. (1988). Seattle Personality Questionnaire for Young School-Aged Children. Unpublished personality questionnaire‚ University of Washington‚ Department of Psychology‚ Seattle.
• Ladd‚ G. (1990). Having friends‚ keeping friends‚ making friends‚ and being liked by peers in the classroom: Predictors of children’s early school adjustment? Child Development‚ 61‚ 1081-1100.
• Greenberg‚ M. & Lengua‚ L. (1995). Scale Construction for the Seattle Personality Inventory. (Fast Track Project Technical Report). Seattle‚ Washington: University of Washington.
• Rains‚ C. (2003). Seattle Personality Questionnaire—Original. (Fast Track Project Technical Report). Available from the Fast Track Project website: http://www.fasttrackproject.org/

Items of the Seattle Personality Questionnaire -Original

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

1. Talk a Lot in Class
2. Feel Afraid a Lot
3. Worry What Other Children Say
4. Afraid to Try New Things
5. Hard to Make Friends at School
6. Lot of Aches and Pains
7. Think School is Fun
8. Worry Others May Not Like You
9. Like Everyone You Know
10. Have Kids to Play with at School
11. Take Things and Keep Them
12. Hard to Ask Join Game
13. Lot of Scary Dreams or Nightmares
14. Lot of Headaches
15. Kids at School Like You
16. Always Good
17. Like Your Teacher
18. Lot of Tummy Aches
19. Lot of Fights
20. Lonely at School
21. Ever Feel Mad
22. Teacher Gets Mad Too Much
23. Hard for You to Listen
24. Nice Things Happen at School
25. Tell a Lot of Lies
26. Feel Like Throwing Up
27. Argue a Lot with Other People
28. Unhappy at School
29. Worry What Others Think of You
30. Tease or Make Fun of Other Kids
31. Wish You Could Stay Home from School
32. Worry about Being Teased
33. Break Things on Purpose
34. Feel Unhappy a Lot
35. Feel Like Crying a Lot
36. Feel Upset about Things
37. Have Trouble Paying Attention
38. Feel You Do Things Wrong a Lot
39. Feel That Most Things Not Fun
40. Feel Sorry for Yourself
41. Have Trouble Falling/Staying Asleep
42. Feel Tired a Lot
43. Often Feel Like Not Eating
44. Want to be by Yourself a Lot