Development and validation of a questionnaire to measure primary school children's images of and attitudes towards curiosity (the CIAC questionnaire)

This paper presents a validation study of a questionnaire to measure primary children's images of and attitudes towards curiosity (the CIAC questionnaire). Policy documents and scientific studies on twenty-first century learning increasingly promote the value of stimulating children's curiosity in primary school. However, no well-established measurement instruments yet exist to assess children's curiosity within educational settings. To fill this void, we focused on the measurement of children's perceptions of curiosity, as important precursors to children's potential curiosity-driven behavior. Based on attitude and curiosity theory, we developed seven components of children's images of and attitudes towards curiosity. We translated these components into corresponding measurement scales, which comprise the CIAC. Results of a validation study among 737 children (ages 8-13), using factor analyses, largely confirmed the factor structures of the image and attitude scales and indicated good convergent and discriminant validity. In addition, we provide evidence for the predictive power of children's images and attitudes on their motivation to be curious.