Assessing Temperament among Finnish Early Adolescents and Their Parents: Psychometric Properties of the Short Forms of the Temperament Questionnaires

The aim of this study was twofold: (a) to assess the psychometric properties of the Revised Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire (EATQ-R) and the Revised Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ-R) among 685 Finnish early adolescents and their parents and (b) to investigate the extent to which adolescents and their parents share similar temperaments. Temperaments of early adolescents (mean age = 12.23 years) were rated by the adolescents themselves and their parents. The parents also rated their own temperaments. With minor modifications to the theoretical models, the results supported the factorial validity and reliability of the EATQ-R and the ATQ-R among Finnish adolescents and their parents. Correlations between parents' and adolescents' ratings of adolescent temperament were moderately strong, supporting convergent validity. The results lent weak support to rater-independent similarity of temperament (especially on the effortful control dimension) between parents and their adolescents.