Measuring Epistemic Curiosity in Young Children

Epistemic curiosity (EC) is the desire to obtain new knowledge capable of either producing positive experiences of intellectual interest (I‐type) or of reducing undesirable conditions of informational deprivation (D‐type). Although researchers acknowledge that there are individual differences in young children's epistemic curiosity, there are no existing measures to assess the I‐ and D‐type constructs of EC in early childhood. The aim of this study was to develop and validate parent‐report scales that reliably assessed early expressions of I‐ and D‐ type EC in young children. To develop the I/D‐Young Children (I/D‐YC) scales, 16 potential items were administered to 316 parents of children aged 3 to 8. These items were adaptations of an existing adult self‐report measure of EC as well as newly developed items. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a 10‐item 2‐factor (5 I‐type, 5 D‐type) model had the best fit. Construct validity analyses and psychometric data indicated that our newly developed I/D‐YC scales are valid and reliable measures of individual differences in early expressions of I‐ and D‐type EC. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.