JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT, 89(2), 162–166

Copyright

C 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

The Inventory of Children’s Individual Differences:

Development and Validation of a Short Version
James E. Deal
Department of Child Development and Family Science
North Dakota State University

Charles F. Halverson, Jr.

Department of Child and Family Development
University of Georgia

Roy P. Martin
Department of Educational Psychology
University of Georgia

James Victor and Spencer Baker

Department of Education
Hampton University

As more researchers utilize the Five-factor model (FFM) of personality with children and
adolescents, the need for instruments designed specifically for use with children and adolescents
increases. In the United States, the 108-item Inventory of Children’s Individual Differences
(ICID; Halverson et al., 2003), has provided researchers with an age and culture neutral
instrument designed specifically to assess the FFM of personality in children and adolescents,
ages 2 to 15, using parental, nonparental, or self-reports. This article presents a shorter, 50-item
version of the ICID (the ICID-S) that maintains the levels of validity and reliability previously
established for the full instrument.

In the adult literature on personality there is an emerging
consensus regarding the main dimensions of personality, i.e.,
the Five-factor model (FFM). While not without its detrac-
tors, this consensus has had many beneficial effects and has
led to advances in personality research by providing struc-
ture, clarity, and direction to diverse research programs. It
also has allowed for a “target” for research in the develop-
ment of individual differences.
While the literature on childhood personality has in the
past lacked such a consensus, it is becoming more and more
apparent that the FFM lexicon can be used successfully with
children as young as 2 years (e.g., Kohnstamm, Halverson,
Mervielde, & Havill, 1998). Use of this framework offers
the same potential benefits to the study of children that it
has brought to the study of adults. A variety of studies has
found a five factor structure to emerge from both parental
and nonparental ratings of children and adolescents, a find-
ing whose robustness is enhanced by the fact that many of
the instruments used were not originally designed to mea-
sure the FFM (e.g., Block, 1961; Goldberg, 2001) or were
measures of adult personality used with samples of chil-
dren (McCrae, Costa, Terracciano, Parker, Mills, De Fruyt,
& Mervielde, 2002). A variety of European researchers has
developed instruments specifically designed to measure the
FFM in children, all with reasonable levels of success (e.g.,
the Belgian HiPic [Mervielde & De Fruyt, 1999], the Dutch
BLIK [Slotboom & Elphick, 1997], the Italian BFQ-C [Bar-
baranelli, Caprara, Rabasca, & Pastorelli, 2003]). In the
United States, the Inventory of Children’s Individual Dif-
ferences (ICID; Halverson et al., 2003), has provided re-
searchers with an age and culture neutral instrument designed
specifically to assess the FFM of personality in children and
adolescents, ages 2 to 15 using parental, nonparental, or
selfreports.
 THE INVENTORY OF CHILDREN’S INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ICID
As previously documented (Halverson et al., 2003), the ICID
was developed by investigators in seven countries who col-
lected parental free-language descriptions of children from
more than 3,000 parents. These descriptions subsequently
were coded using an intuitive, rational coding system (for
details see Havill, Allen, Halverson, & Kohnstamm, 1994).
Items from the U.S., Chinese, Dutch, and Greek samples
then were subjected to an exhaustive translation and back-
translation procedure that initially resulted in a 144-item
questionnaire containing items that matched the distribution
of the FFM phrases in the parental lexicon. This version
was further refined, resulting in a 108-item Likert-scale in-
strument from which 15 robust midlevel scales then suc-
cessfully were factored into the FFM: Neuroticism (Fear-
ful, Negative Affect, Distractible), Extraversion (Sociability,
Shy, Activity Level, Positive Emotions), Openness (Intellect,
Openness), Agreeableness (Considerate, Compliant, Positive
Emotions, Antagonism, Strong Willed, Negative Affect), and
Conscientiousness (Organized, Achievement Oriented, Dis-
tractible, Compliant, Intellect).
The ICID has been used successfully in examinations
of self-concept and school performance (Baker, 2001;
Demetriou & Kazi, 2001), social and behavioral ratings in
preschool (Havill, White, & Halverson, 2000), and resiliency
in late childhood (Davey, Eaker, & Walters, 2002). It also has
been used successfully as a self-report instrument for adoles-
cents both in the United States and in Greece (Davey et al.,
2002; Deal, Halverson, Havill, & Martin, 2005; Demetriou
& Kazi, 2001).
At 108 items, however, the ICID is a lengthy instrument.
A shorter version would enable researchers to utilize the in-
strument in more settings. Our purpose is to present a shorter
version of the ICID (the ICID-S) that maintains the levels
of validity and reliability previously established for the full
instrument.
METHOD
Participants
Data analyzed here are from Halverson and colleagues
(2003), specifically the American subsample from which the
108-item version was extracted. Descriptions of 903 chil-
dren were collected from parents (mothers and fathers) as
part of the larger project. Of the children described, 47.2%
were male, with 52.8% female. Regarding ethnicity, 34.2%
were Caucasian, with 60.6% African American; the remain-
ing children were multiracial (2.3%), AsianPacific Islander
(1.0%), Hispanic (.6%), and Native American (.4%), with
0.6% simply reporting “other.” Ages ranged from 35 months
to 169 months (14 years). The person describing the child was
the mother in 65.3% of cases, and the father in 28.5%; other
reporters included aunts, grandparents, godparents, and step-
parents. The sample was mostly middleclass, with 46% of the
163
raters having completed high school, 37% having completed
college or technical school, and 13.6% having completed an
advanced degree.
Instruments
The instrument package was described by Halverson and
colleagues (2003). Parents completed the original 144-item
form of the ICID; all analyses in this report use the final 108-
item ICID extracted from it. Parents also rated their child
on the Temperament Assessment Battery (TAB-R, Martin
& Bridger, 1999), specifically the Inhibition and Impulsiv-
ity subscales; on measures of Attention Focusing, Inhibitory
Control, Perceptual Sensitivity, Smiling and Laughter, and
Low Intensity Pleasure, as assessed by the Children’s Behav-
ior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher,
2001); and on measures of Conduct Problems, Personality
Problems, and Total Behavior Problems from the Behavior
Problem Checklist (BPC: Quay, 1987). These scales initially
were used to establish the convergent and discriminant va-
lidity of the ICID. We use them here to establish congruence
between the longform and the shortform of the ICID.
RESULTS
Initial Selection of Items
Our goal was to develop three-item versions of each ICID
subscale, giving a total item count of 45. Because three items
might not provide adequate reliability and validity for all
subscales, we started with five-item subscales, reducing them
to four and then three while checking for loss of reliability
and covariance with the original subscales. This gave us the
option of allowing some subscales to have four or five items,
while still striving for three for the majority of subscales.
The first step was to draw a random sample (n = 452)
of half the respondents. Initial analyses were conducted on
this sample, then confirmed on second half of the full sample
(n = 451). Initial items were those with the top five loadings
from the first principal component of each ICID subscale.
Alpha reliabilities were calculated, as were the correlations
between the five-item subscales and the full subscales. Initial
results were good, with alphas ranging from .74 to 1.00 and
correlations ranging from .91 to 1.00. Next, using the alphas
computed in the initial step we deleted the item that would
retain the highest alpha among the remaining four items. The
alpha and full-item correlations were recalculated. Results
were again good, with alphas for the four-item scales rang-
ing from .72 to .93 and correlations with the full-item scales
ranging from .87 to .97. The same procedure was followed
to select items for the three-item scales, resulting in alphas
from .67 to .82 (only two scales had alphas below .72: Fearful
and Shy) and correlations from .84 to .95 (only four scales
had correlations below .90: Openness, Organized, Sociable,
and Strong-Willed). For the six subscales in which the three-
item scales had alphas or correlations that were too low, the
164 DEAL ET AL.

TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics, Reliability, and Validity Coefficients for the ICID-S

Full Sample Alpha Coefficients Correlation with Long Form

M SD A B C A B C

Achievement Oriented 14.19 3.03 .78 .72 .75 .92 .91 .92
Activity Level 15.67 3.26 .81 .79 .80 .93 .94 .93
Antagonism 8.51 3.37 .75 .73 .74 .91 .90 .91
Compliant 13.80 2.94 .79 .71 .74 .92 .92 .92
Considerate 15.09 3.09 .80 .86 .84 .92 .92 .92
Distractible 10.33 3.45 .76 .72 .74 .91 .93 .92
Fearful/Insecure∗ 12.17 4.28 .70 .72 .71 .92 .91 .91
Intellect 15.81 3.28 .85 .80 .83 .92 .94 .93
Negative Affect 10.30 3.63 .78 .79 .78 .93 .91 .92
Openness∗ 21.12 3.87 .81 .75 .78 .93 .90 .92
Organized∗ 8.63 3.96 .74 .78 .76 .94 .94 .94
Positive Emotions 17.29 3.05 .87 .82 .85 .91 .90 .91
Shy∗ 11.99 4.12 .74 .67 .70 .94 .95 .95
Sociable∗ 20.59 4.04 .79 .83 .81 .94 .95 .95
Strong-Willed∗ 15.93 4.44 .73 .76 .75 .85 .88 .89

Note. A = First half of sample (n = 452); B = Second half of sample (n = 451); C = Total sample (N = 903); ∗ denotes four-item scales; all
others are three-item scales.

four-item scales were used instead. Finally, the average in-
teritem correlation ranged from .38 to .69, with only one
subscale (Fearful) falling below the .40 to .50 range recom-
mended by Clark and Watson (1995).
Domain scores—Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness—then were calcu-
lated, with correlations between the full-item scores and the
reduced item scores averaging .96 (range = .95 to .97). At
the domain level as at well as at the facet level, then, the
reduced item scales seemed to be measuring the same con-
structs as the full scales. For the final 15 reduced subscales
Table 1 provides alpha reliabilities and correlations with the
full-item scales. The items and their associated scale are
listed in the Appendix.
The alpha and correlational analyses for the facet sub-
scales were repeated in the second subsample, and results
were essentially the same as for the first half (see Table
1). Domain scores—Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness—were again calcu-
lated, and correlations with the full-item domain scores av-
eraged .96 (range = .95 to .97). As with the first half of the
sample, the reduced item scales seemed to be measuring the
same constructs as the full item scales at both the scale and
domain levels. Finally, the two subsamples were combined,
and descriptive statistics, alphas, and correlations were com-
puted on the full sample. Results were essentially the same
as those for the two halves.
facet scores from the ICID were correlated with measures
of Inhibition and Impulsivity, as assessed by the TAB; with
measures of Attention Focusing, Inhibitory Control, Percep-
tual Sensitivity, Smiling and Laughter, and Low Intensity
Pleasure, as assessed by the CBQ; and with measures of
Conduct Problems, Personality Problems, and Total Behav-
ior Problems, as assessed by the BPC.
To determine the degree of congruence between (a)
relations between outcome measures and the long-form
ICID, and (b) relations between outcome measures and
the short-form ICID, we first replicated the correlations
presented by Halverson and colleagues (Table 6, 2003) using
the short-form ICID and the total sample; this replication is
presented here in Table 2. The sample size for this replication
ranges from 348 to 364, as not all children in the original
study completed all outcome measures. We then turned each
set of correlations—one from the full-item scales, one from
the short-form scales—into a column vector, and computed
a correlation between the two vectors. This correlation was
.92 (p < .001), indicating a high degree of correspondence
between results obtained with the two different ICID forms.
In addition, the mean difference between the two vectors
was .006, further indicating the high degree of similarity
between the two.
SUMMARY

Relations of ICID-R Subscales to Other
Measures
In order to establish convergent and discriminant validity of
the full ICID, Halverson and colleagues (2003) assessed the
relation of the ICID facets and domains to measures of tem-
perament and behavior problems. Specifically, domain and
The ICID has shown the potential to aid researchers investi-
gating childhood personality across a variety of substantive
areas. The ICID-S, retaining the same levels of reliability and
validity as the original ICID, offers the same potential in a
shorter instrument that should facilitate wider and easier use.
A briefer instrument minimizes the time required to com-
plete it, making it much more feasible to use with teachers,
 THE INVENTORY OF CHILDREN’S INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 165

TABLE 2
Correlations of ICID-S Subscales With Outcome Measures

TAB TAB CBQ CBQ CBQ CBQ CBQ BP BP BP

IN IM AF IC PS S&L LIP CD PP TOT

Subscales
Positive Emotions –.22 –.42 .26 .34 .30 .36 .36 –.27 –.19 –.26
Sociability –.66 –.17 .06 .15 .25 .48 .18 .07 –.30 –.13
Considerate –.12 –.45 .37 .49 .35 .27 .40 –.36 –.13 –.29
Activity Level –.34 .09 –.01 –.05 .11 .33 .05 .19 –.17 –.03
Openness –.27 –.27 .24 .19 .34 .38 .33 –.04 –.21 –.17
Antagonism .13 .58 –.39 –.54 –.23 –.28 –.35 .47 .18 .36
Strong-Willed .00 .50 –.24 –.39 –.08 –.07 –.19 .48 .15 .31
Organized –.02 –.44 .49 .49 .31 .19 .37 –.38 –.14 –.30
Achievement-Oriented –.07 –.50 .56 .56 .44 .26 .41 –.35 –.13 –.29
Distractible .09 .57 –.55 –.46 –.30 –.17 –.31 .34 .26 .34
Fearful/Insecure .55 .35 –.18 –.18 –.17 –.41 –.18 .03 .35 .20
Negative Affect .15 .59 –.31 –.44 –.13 –.17 –.26 .47 .20 .35
Shy .68 .32 –.15 –.22 –.20 –.45 –.16 .01 .39 .22
Domains
Neuroticism .40 .70 –.44 –.54 –.29 –.38 –.35 .43 .39 .44
Extraversion –.57 –.20 .14 .18 .33 .53 .28 .08 –.31 –.15
Openness –.23 –.47 .51 .45 .49 .41 .50 –.22 –.24 –.29
Agreeableness –.16 –.67 .42 .57 .28 .30 .40 –.54 –.22 –.42
Conscientiousness –.06 –.60 .64 .60 .42 .24 .43 –.43 –.21 –.39

Note. N = 348 to 364; r’s above .09 significant at .05 or higher; TAB = Temperament Assessment Battery; CBQ = Child Behavior Questionnaire; BP =
Quay–Peterson Behavior Problem Checklist; IN = Inhibition; IM = Impulsivity; AF = Attention Focusing; IC = Inhibitory Control; LIP = Low Intensity
Pleasure; PS = Perceptual Sensitivity; S&L = Smiling & Laughter; CD = Conduct Problems; PP = Personality Problems; TOT = Behavior Problems Total
score.

who could reasonably be asked to rate multiple children, and
school-aged children.
It should be noted, however, that the ICID-S was validated
using the same sample as the original ICID, a sample that is
not fully representative of the U.S. population. Replication of
these results with a new, more representative sample would
lend further empirical support to the ICID-S.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Data collection in this project was supported by grant
MH50302 from the National Institute of Mental Health to
Charles F. Halverson, Jr., and Roy P. Martin.
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APPENDIX
ICID-S Scales, Item Numbers, and Items
Achievement Orientation
1. self-disciplined
16. a hard worker
30. a drive to do better
Activity Level
2. energetic
17. always on the move
31. active physically
Antagonism
3. mean
18. rude
32. disobedient
Compliance
4. obedient
1. self-disciplined
33. dependable and trustworthy
Considerate
5. thoughtful of others
19. considerate
34. sensitive to others’ feelings
Distractible
6. a short attention span
20. easily distracted
35. forgets things easily
Fearful/Insecure
7. insecure
21. fearful
36. afraid of a lot of things
45. lacks confidence
Intelligent
8. quick to learn
22. a good memory
37. good thinking abilities
Note. All items are proceeded by “My/This child is . . . ” Questionnaire format is avail-
able from the first author.
James E. Deal
Department of Child Development and Family Science
North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND 58105
Email: Jim.Deal@ndsu.edu
Received July 21, 2006
Revised November 7, 2006
DEAL ET AL.
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Slotboom, A., & Elphick, E. (1997). Parents perceptions of child personal-
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lands: Haveka.
Negative Affect
9. irritable
23. quick-tempered
38. gets angry easily
Openness to Experience
10. a lot of imagination
24. interested in new things
39. curious
46. likes to ask questions
Organized
11. disorganized (Reverse Scored)
25. organized
40. keeps things neat and tidy
47. does things carefully and with thought
Positive Emotions
12. a joy to be with
26. sweet
41. loving
Shy
13. withdrawn
27. slow to warm up to new people or
situations
42. difficulty making friends
48. difficulty adjusting to new situations
Sociable
14. sociable
28. outgoing
43. loves to be with other people
49. makes friends easily
Strong-Willed
15. stubborn
29. hard-headed
44. wants things his/her own way
50. manipulates to get his/her own way