The Child Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire (CPBQ): Assessing toddlers’ prosocial behavior

Introduction: By the end of the first year of their life, children start displaying voluntary actions aimed at benefit one another. These early attempts at prosocial behavior become increasingly sophisticated throughout the second year of life, when toddlers acquire the ability to engage in instrumental helping, to respond empathically to other’s distress and to share their resources with others. Despite the growing interest of research in early prosocial behavior, there is a lack of validated tools to assess these behaviors in toddlers. Aim: This study aimed at assessing the psychometric proprieties of the Child Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire (CPBQ), a new instrument to evaluate toddlers’ prosocial behavior. Method: A total of 409 Italian parents (M=36.04 yeas; SD=5.34; range: 21-61 years) from middle-class families in Northern Italy participated in the study. Children (218 boys) ranged in age from 12 to 46 months (M=28.37; SD=7.61). Parents were asked to fill in three questionnaires: the CPBQ (Grazzani et al., 2016), regarding children’s prosocial behavior, the EmQue-I13 (Grazzani et al., 2015; 2017) concerning toddlers’ empathy and prosociality, and the prosocial scale of SDQ (Goodman, 1997). Results: Confirmatory analyses showed good fit indices for the 9 item model: χ2(31) = 74.26, p = .001, NC = 2.39; RMSEA: .058; NFI = .95, NNFI = .95, CFI = .97. Such model evidenced 3 different factors reporting reasonable internal reliability values: Helping (α = .726), Comforting (α = .782) and Sharing (α=.695). Conclusions: The preliminary results of this study show that CPBQ could be a useful instrument to assess toddlers’ prosocial behavior, such as helping, sharing and comforting