Development and Evaluation of the Highly Sensitive Child Interview

• In Event: Recent Advances in Research on Highly Sensitive Children

Abstract

Background: About 30% of children are characterised by high environmental sensitivity. These children are more sensitive to both negative and positive exposures due to a heightened capacity to perceive and process environmental influences (Pluess, 2015). Environmental sensitivity is considered a common temperament trait with a genetic basis (Assary et al., 2020). Such sensitivity is usually measured with questionnaires, either completed by children themselves or their parents. In order to overcome limitations inherent to questionnaires and to obtain a more comprehensive and more objective measurement of sensitivity, we set out to develop and evaluate an interview for the use with children, their parents, and their teachers.

Methods: The Highly Sensitive Child (HSC) – Interview was developed based on items from existing sensitivity questionnaires as well as interviews with experts in highly sensitive children with a focus on the manifestation of high sensitivity in the school context. An initial set of 65 items was narrowed down to 17 through an iterative bidirectional process between authors and a panel of experts. The final 17 items were then adapted for inclusion in the interview. Each question was phrased according to Harter’s (1982) format which asks interviewees to select one of two possible responses (e.g., “Some children prefer being in smaller groups whereas other children prefer being in larger groups. Which of these two groups is more like this child?”). The interview was then applied in subsample of 72 8-year old children from a longitudinal study on sensitivity in primary school children. Interviews were conducted with 61 parents, 60 children and nine teachers (reporting on 34 of the children). The majority of interviews were carried out online through a video call.

Results: Internal consistency across the 17 items was good with α = .83 for parent-report and α = .70 for child report and a bit lower with α = .66 for teacher report. According to principal component analysis, a two factor solution emerged for parent- and teacher-reported data, whereas a single factor solution fit child-reported data best. The agreement of the total score between parent and child interviews was significant with r = .53. However, teacher-report data did not correlate with parent- or child-report data. When considering associations with questionnaire data, the correlation between parent-report questionnaire and interview data was significant with r = .60, child questionnaire and interview data correlated with r = .25, and for teachers the association was significant with r = .50.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that the HSC-Interview has good internal reliability and correlates with questionnaire data within each type of informant. The observation that the correlations between interview and questionnaire data were not higher than .60 suggests that the interview may provide additional and potentially more accurate information on children’s sensitivity. Hence, the HSC-Interview may provide an alternative to existing sensitivity questionnaires, suitable for more in-depth measurement of sensitivity. However, whereas parent and child scores were positively associated with each other, teacher report was not, raising questions whether teacher-report on children’s sensitivity is a reliable for the assessment of sensitivity.

Authors

• Michael Pluess, Queen Mary University of London
  Presenting Author

• Francesca Lionetti, G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara and Queen Mary University of London

• Jenni Elise kahkonen, Queen Mary University of London