Academic literature on the topic 'Children Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ)'

Background and aims:To explore rearing, coping, attributional style and their relations in depression adolescents.Methods:64 adolescents with depressive disorder and 125 normal subjects of similar age, sex were presented with self-made social demographic scale, Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran-own memories of parental rearing practices in childhood (EMBU), Children attributional style questionnaire (CASQ) and Coping style questionnaire.Results:1.As to EMBU, there was a significant deficit in parental emotional warmth (p< 0.001) with depression adolescents, and whose parental punishment and strict (p< 0.05), rejection and denial (p< 0.001) were higher than normal ones.2.As to CASQ, the differences were significant in self-blame (p< 0.001), asking for help (p< 0.001), daydreaming (p< 0.001) and recession (p< 0.05).3.The difference of attributional pattern was significant (p< 0.001).4.Mather’ emotional warmth and rejection and denial were both related to adolescents’ coping style and attributional style.Conclusion:Depressive adolescents had negative coping style and attributional style, and mother’ rearing style may has relation with them.

Research into the areas of depression and resilience suggests that an optimistic attributional style is a key factor in coping effectively with stressors and functioning adaptively despite adversity. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a program designed to increase positive thinking skills, through awareness and practice, to pre-adolescent children who have been identified as exhibiting a more pessimistic explanatory style. From a total of 110 Year 5 and 6 students, 38 students were selected to participate in the program because they exhibited a more pessimistic explanatory style. Program participants were administered the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) at pre-, post-, and 3-month post-program. Non-program participants completed the CASQ at pre- and 3-month post- program. Results indicated that program participants significantly improved their attributional style scores post program, and that these improvements were maintained at 3-month post-program follow-up. When attributional style difference scores at pre- and 3-month post program were compared, improved scores for program participants were significantly greater than changes in attributional style scores for those students who were not in the program. Given the links between attributional style, depression, and a range of behaviours, such promising results warrant further investigation into the effects of such a program on other outcome measures. The findings provide support for the benefits to be gained by developing positive attributional style during the pre-adolescent years.

This descriptive research conducted with 25 children under purposive sampling to obtain an overview of expanatory style of children with leukemia in the Foundation "X" Bandung. Measurement instrument is a modification of the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) by Seligman (1990) which consists of 48 items forced choice. Explanatory style research showed that 60% respondents have a pessimistic, and the rest have an optimistic. There is a link between children's understanding of their significant person’s explanatory style, criticism from parents or the trustees, their crisis experience, as well as the stage of suffering from leukemia with the children with leukemia’s explanatory style. This research suggested further research with more sample sizes about children’s explanatory style in order to make normative constraints, also further investigate the factors that affect explanatory style and dimensions. It is also suggested that management of the Foundation "X" to design interventions that can improve children's explanatory style.

This investigation examined the relationship between adolescent students’ attributional style and their perceived academic self-efficacy using the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) (Seligman et al., 1984) and Multidimensional Scales of Perceived Self Efficacy (Bandura, 1989). Attributional style, defined as the way in which people explain events (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978), is represented by three dimensions: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalisation. Statistically significant differences were observed between attributional style for gender and academic streams. Females were more optimistic and hopeful than males. They attributed permanence to good events, but assumed personal responsibility for bad events. Males displayed a more negative attributional style, perceiving negative events as permanent and pervasive. Higher-ability students reported greater optimism about their future compared to their lower-ability students. No gender and ability differences were found for academic self-efficacy. Students’ attributional style was positively associated with their efficacy for self-regulated learning. Findings were interpreted in terms of educational implications and student empowerment, with suggestions made for future studies.

The structure of the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire was examined for 359 children in Grades 5 and 6. Unsatisfactory internal consistency reliabilities ranged from .19 to .41 for the subscales and .54 for the overall measure. In addition, scree plots of the individual subscales resulted in a range of 2 to 4 factors per subscale and hence lacked evidence of unidimensionality.

People differ significantly in how they usually explain to themselves the reasons of events, both positive and negative, that happen in their lives. Psychological research shows that children who tend to think optimistically have certain advantages as compared to their pessimistically thinking peers: they are less likely to suffer from depression, establish more positive relationships with peers, and demonstrate higher academic achievements. This paper describes the process of creating the children’s version of the Optimistic Attributional Style Questionnaire (OASQ-C). This technique is based on the theory of learned hopelessness and optimism developed by M. Seligman, L. Abramson and J. Teas dale and is an efficient (compact) tool for measuring optimism as an explanatory style in children and adolescents (9-14 years). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that this technique is a two-factor structure with acceptable reliability. Validity is supported by the presence of expected correlations between explanatory style and rates of psychological well-being, dispositional optimism, positive attitude to life and its aspects, depression, and academic performance. The outcomes of this technique are not affected by social desirability. The developed questionnaire may be recommended to researchers and school counsellors for evaluating optimism (optimistic thinking) as one of the major factors in psychological well-being of children; it may also be used in assessing the effectiveness of cognitive oriented training for adolescents.

This longitudinal study investigates whether anhedonia and pessimistic attributional style represent a clinical state or a trait in hospitalized depressed adolescents. 81 consecutive adolescent inpatients were screened with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the clinician-rated Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) criteria sheet. 51 patients with BDI score≥10and/or≥4symptoms on MDD criteria sheet were assessed at Time 1 upon admission, with 39 patients (78%) assessed at discharge (Time 2) with the Pleasure Scale for Children and Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire—Revised. Anhedonia and pessimism at admission were associated with BDI scores at admission and discharge as well as number of depressive symptoms and depression severity. MDD diagnosis was associated with anhedonia, but not with pessimism. Pessimism—but not anhedonia—improved significantly by discharge. Results suggest that while some adolescents exhibit enduring anhedonia, pessimistic attributional style appears to be a concomitant feature of an acute depressive state.

The article presents the results of an empirical study of specific characteristics of the success of boys and girls of primary school age in solving convergent problems under the condition of varying motivational attitudes. The study was conducted in the elementary school of the State Budgetary Educational Institution of Moscow “School No. 1561” educational complex in 2016-2018. The study sample includes 239 second-grade students the average age of whom was 8.2 years old. 137 of the study participants were boys and 102 were girls which constitutes 57% and 43% of the sample, respectively. Motivation is assessed via the authors’ modification of N.V. Elfimova’s method “A ladder of motives”, a version of M. Seligman’s Children’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) modified by N.A. Baturina and D.A. Tsiring, and the authors’ modification of C. Dweck’s Implicit Theory Scale. The study of the cognitive sphere of the primary school students involves J. Raven’s progressive matrices test, P. Torrance’s test of creative thinking, and E.E. Tunik’s adaptation of J. Johnson’s creativity scale. Within the framework of the experiment, two blocks of convergent tasks are formed: one including non-verbal transitivity tasks (the logical block) and the other containing volumetric and spatial thinking tasks (the spatial block). It is established that the success of primary school students of both sexes in solving convergent tasks is associated not only with the extrinsic motivational attitude constructed through verbal instruction but also with the specific psychological characteristics of the development of the cognitive and motivational spheres in children. The relationship between the success in solving convergent tasks and the psychological characteristics of cognitive development and the motivational sphere differs for boys and girls of primary school age which manifests most intensely in the level of development of the non-verbal component, the leading motivation, and the specifics of the development of the attributional style of explaining success and failure, as well as its particular components.

Causal explanations that individuals use to explain events in their lives are referred to as explanatory style. Three dimensions: internal-external, stable-unstable, and global-specific have most frequently been measured. Internal, stable, global explanations for negative events represent a pessimistic style, whereas these same explanations for positive events are considered optimistic. Explanations for negative events that are stable and global are considered to reflect hopelessness. The psychometric properties of the most commonly used measure of explanatory style for children, the Children Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ; Kaslow, Tanenbaum & Seligman, 1978) are poor. This is a limitation to research and theoretical advancement. Four studies were conducted in this project to investigate the measurement of explanatory style in 9-12 year old children. In Study 1, children (N = 173) completed the CASQ in a group to investigate the psychometric properties of the composite scales and subscales and the relationship between explanatory style and depressive symptoms. Internal consistency and inter-item correlations of the composite scales and subscales were poor. Regression analyses showed explanatory style for negative events (pessimism or hopelessness) made weak but significant unique contributions to the explanations of depressive symptoms. Study 2 (N = 72) investigated the stability of the CASQ scales longitudinally. The internal consistency and inter-item correlations for the CASQ scales were poor. The stability of explanatory style was low. The predicted relationship between depressive symptoms and explanatory style was found to be inconsistent, emerging at Time 1 but not at Time 2, 12 months later. Study 3 (N = 79) examined the forced-choice response scale of the CASQ using a fuzzy set approach. A fuzzy set scale which uses a Likert-type response that ranged from completely true to completely false was used to determine how well a child’s response of choice, their natural response, matched both the selected and non-selected response from the CASQ. Items on the CASQ that measure both pessimism and hopelessness were found to be a poor match to the natural responses of children. Little separation was found between the selected and non-selected responses for all items. The internal consistency of the CASQ was poor when the forced choice scoring approach was used. When Likert-type fuzzy values were used, good internal consistency was obtained. Providing a wider range of responses, obtained using fuzzy values, produced a more sensitive measure of the components of explanatory style. When the CASQ was scored according to the forced choice protocol weak, significant relationships were found between explanatory style and depressive symptoms, and explanatory style and neuroticism. There were no significant relationships found for either pessimism or hopelessness, with either depression or neuroticism using Likert-type fuzzy values. Study 4 elicited spontaneous causal explanations following success or failure on tasks that were familiar or unfamiliar. Task familiarity was manipulated. Using an interview format, children (N = 111) responded to questions, eliciting causal explanations, following task success or failures. Likert-type scales measured the internality, stability or globality of the explanation. Results showed that, following failure on two familiar tasks, acceptable levels of internal consistency were obtained on the subscales used to produce the measure of hopelessness and for the composite measure of hopelessness. This same pattern did not emerge following failure on combinations of familiar and unfamiliar events or on two tasks that were unfamiliar. Stable and global explanations and the composite measure of hopelessness, following failure on familiar tasks, were also positively related with depressive symptoms but not neuroticism. These results show that a reliable measure of hopelessness can be obtained from spontaneous explanations for failure at familiar events. Under these conditions the theoretically predicted relationship between explanatory style and depressive symptoms emerges. Conclusions were drawn about the theoretical conceptualisation of explanatory style and measurement recommendations were made that apply to 9- to 12-year-old children. Explanations for familiar events produced a consistent measure of explanatory style. The use of a Likert-type response scale to assess agreement with internal, stable, global components were shown to improve scale reliability. The findings are discussed in relation to theory and the measurement of explanatory style in children.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Phychology
Griffith Health
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This study explores the use of two tests of optimism: the Youth Life Orientation Test (YLOT) and the Children’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) in six English primary schools with children aged between 9 years and 12 years. The study grew out of some problems I was confronted with as part of my professional practice regarding the outcomes for children in a school that was failing to meet Government Targets in attainment. In the study I worked with the staff and 9 – 11 year old children in six primary schools in rural, town, suburban and inner-city contexts. The total number of children was 305. The children were tested using the CASQ and YLOT and a range of other measures. Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients (coefficient alpha) and test-retest coefficients for the subscales and overall scale of the CASQ and YLOT were calculated. The validity of each measure was explored using evidence from: test content; internal structure; relations to other variables; and from the consequences of testing. Lastly the use of the YLOT as a proxy and nature of any associations between the measures used was explored looking at individual; school and community level data. The study found that the YLOT has good psychometric properties and could be used as a basis for further work both professionally and for research. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for the whole scale was 0.81. The psychometric properties of the CASQ were poor in that the subscales had very low reliability coefficients and the aggregated total scale reliability coefficient was still too low at 0.53 to be able to recommend the use of the CASQ. Before the CASQ could be used there would need to be extensive work to increase its reliability and validity through lengthening the test or changing the format of the questions to reduce their specificity. The use of the YLOT as a proxy indicator of mental health and associations with school and community level data were discussed. The YLOT could provide an indication of well being particularly in relation to childhood depression. The community level data were not sensitive enough to discern hypothesised associations between communities and the children attending the schools sited in the communities.