The Early Childhood Curiosity Questionnaire: Development and Psychometric Properties in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Germany

Abstract

Curiosity in early childhood is associated with exploration, learning, and cognitive growth, yet little is known about how trait curiosity can be reliably assessed in preschoolers. This paper reports the development and validation of a caregiver-report measure designed to assess curiosity in children aged 2-5 years across three cultural contexts: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany. Pursuing three objectives, we (1) generated 41 age-appropriate items by adapting and extending the Infant and Toddler Curiosity Questionnaire (ITCQ; Altmann et al., 2025a), first in English, followed by Dutch and German translations; (2) examined the factor structure in each country independently (sample sizes: UK = 398; NL = 330; DE = 540), discarded poorly fitting items, and integrated the results to produce a single, 25-item questionnaire comprising three subscales (Novelty, Investigative, and Interactive Curiosity); and (3) evaluated the reliability and validity of the final instrument within each national sample to assess its performance across cultural contexts. Psychometric analyses indicated strong internal consistency, coherent relations with other validated measures, and evidence of cross-cultural applicability. The resulting questionnaire, a direct continuation of the previously developed infant version, enables systematic assessment of young children's curiosity as a multidimensional construct observable in everyday life.