Development and initial validation of the Child Routines Inventory

The importance of establishing predictable routines during childhood consistently has been emphasized in the popular parenting literature, despite a paucity of empirical evidence. The lack of research may be partially due to a lack of suitable instruments designed to measure children's routines. This study describes development and preliminary psychometric data in support of the Child Routines Inventory (CRI), an empirically derived, content-valid, parent-report measure of commonly occurring routines in school-aged children. Principal components analysis yielded a four-factor structure (composed of 36 items), accounting for 44.2% of the total variance. The CRI was found to have excellent internal consistency (alpha = .90), good test-retest reliability (r = .86), and preliminary evidence of construct validity, demonstrating a moderate relationship with measures of child behavior problems and family routines. These results suggest the CRI to be a promising new measure of child routines that would benefit from further validation studies.