Consistency in adult reports on child personality over the pre-school years

Three types of temporal and cross-observer consistency in adult reports on child personality were investigated over three waves of a longitudinal study. Employing the Inventory of Child Individual Differences (Halverson et al., 2003 ), 3-year-olds were rated separately by mothers, fathers, and pre-school teachers. The children were re-assessed one and two years later. The teacher-perceived organization of child personality, which resulted in conscientiousness - openness/intellect, extraversion - emotional stability, and disagreeableness domains appeared stable over time, whereas parental ratings also yielded congruent components across the spouses: extraversion, conscientiousness, disagreeableness, and neuroticism. Mother - father agreement was high across the traits and broadband domains in each wave, while the consistency of the parent - teacher trait assessments was lower. The child scores showed a high rank - order stability and small normative change over the pre-school years. Most of the mean-level change patterns as reflected through adult ratings were similar across the informants, indicating age-increases in extraversion, conscientiousness, and the respective marker traits.