Abstract

Validity evaluation of the children's attributional style questionnaire (CASQ). Psicol. esc. educ. [online]. 2003, vol.7, n.2, pp. 161-170. ISSN 1413-8557.

The Children’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) is a widely used measure of optimism in American children. Researches have showed the importance of studying children’s optimism to prevent mental and physical illness. This study explored the validity of the CASQ for Brazilian children. After the translation and adaptations, 410 students (9 to 12 years) from four schools in Curitiba answered the CASQ; 280 of them also completed two scales of parental responsiveness and demandingness, for the parenting styles classification - authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, neglectful). Analyses revealed that the Brazilian version had low internal consistency reliability, but demonstrated validity when compared with the two scales of parental responsiveness and demandingness, since authoritative parents were associated to higher optimism scores and negligent parents were associated to lower optimism. More studies must be done about this questionnaire and it must be used carefully in others samples.

Keywords : Explanatory style; Optimism questionnaire; Psychometric properties; Validation.

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