CHILD RUMINATION INTERVIEW VALIDATION: A CHILD-FRIENDLY TOOL TO ASSESS RUMINATION IN KIDS

Rumination is a cognitive process characterized by an abstract, repetitive, and negative thinking style. In spite of its crucial role for the prevention of distress and the promotion of well being in children, the construct of rumination in childhood has received little attention in the scientific literature. One of the possible causes of such neglect may rely in the absence of appropriate tools to assess rumination in this age group. To overcome this limitation, the present study first aimed at validating a child-friendly tool (Children Rumination Interview; CRI) to be used in a sample of aged 6-12 years. Methods. The sample was composed of 49 males and 51 females, aged between 7 and 12 years (N = 100; average age =9.35 ± 1.13 years) in medium-high socioeconomic status, attended school in Italy’s central regions. Children/preadolescent’s rumination was assessed through a semi-structured interview developed ad hoc for this study. In addition to the interview, participants were individually administered a battery of self-report standardized questionnaires. We used Children's Response Style Questionnaire to examine concurrent and discriminant validity. The average time needed to complete the session was 20-30 minutes. Children Rumination Interview. The Children Rumination Interview (CRI) is a children-friendly instrument that uses vignettes and cartoons to assess rumination tendencies inchildren and preadolescents aged 7 to 12 years. Compared to other self-report linguistic instruments, this illustrated tool has the advantage to be usable with samples speaking any language. The CRI has two comparable versions, one for males and one for females, and depicts four unpleasant prototypical events that may trigger ruminative thoughts: 1) alone (i.e., looking at his/her broken toy); 2) with his/her parents (i.e., being reproached because his/her room is a mess); 3) with friends (i.e., being teased by his/her mates); 4) at school (receiving a bad grade from the teacher). For each of these cartoons, the child is first asked to describe the scene to ensure accurate understanding, then to report if the depicted event has ever occurred to him/her. As an important feature of rumination is the persistence of unpleasant thoughts over time, well beyond the occurrence of the event itself, each situation also includes three further vignettes in which the same event is represented as a cartoon in the children’s head. Three different times after the occurrence of the event are depicted: a few hours after, before going to sleep, and the next day. For each of these three vignettes, the participant is asked to report on a 5-point Likert scale (from 1 = never to 5 = always), how often he/she happened to think about the unpleasant event. Levels of sadness, happiness and anger may be optionally assessed at the beginning and the end of the task by the use of cartoons representing a Likert scale (from 0 = not at all to 5 = very much). Children's Response Style Questionnaire. The Children's Response Style Questionnaire (CRSQ; Abela et al. 2000) has been derived from the adults’ Response Style Questionnaire (Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow 1991). It is a self-report instrument consisting of 25 items divided into three subscales: rumination, distraction and problem solving. Respondents are asked to indicate how often (from 0 = almost never to 3 = almost always) they engage a specific behavior when they experience sadness. Cronbach’s alpha in the present study ranged from .73 to .81 for the different subscales. An explorative factor analysis was conducted on the initial set of 13 items, using the PAF. Factor analysis yielded two main factors: personal life-related rumination (31.1% of the total variance) and school-related rumination (12.9% of the total variance). Cronbach’s α was .80 for the first and .74 for the second dimension. A 2x2 factorial MANOVA was performed to test for the effect of gender and age (7-9 years vs. 10-12 years) on the two CRI factors and the total score. Significant gender (Wilks' λ = 0.88; F(3,94) = 4.14, p < .01, η2 = 0.12) and age (Wilks' λ = 0.82; F(3,94) = 6.87, p < .01, η2 = 0.18) effects emerged. The analysis did not yield any gender X age interaction effect. Older (10-12 years) and female participants showed higher tendencies to ruminate about school issues compared to their younger (7-9 years) and male counterparts. A positive correlation emerged between total score CRI and Rumination scale CRSQ(r= .45; p<.01), proving the concurrent and discriminant validity. There wasn’t correlation between total score CRI and Distraction and Problem solving scale CRSQ (r=.04; p<.01; r=-.06; p<.01). It was checked the reliability both subscale identified in the factor analysis. For the first subscale (personal life-related rumination) α Cronbach =.80; for the second subscale (school-related rumination) α di Cronbach =. 74. The effect of age is not surprising if we consider that our age range encompasses the transition from elementary to middle school (at 11 years). As to gender differences, a meta-analysis found small but significant differences in rumination between boys and girls in childhood (d = .14) and adolescence (d = .36), with girls more likely to ruminate than boys (Johnson & Whisman 2013). Our data suggests that such effect sizes may increase if different types of rumination are taken into account. Overall, results point to the fact that gender disparities in rumination may emerge early during the development. The CRI appears as a promising tool to assess rumination in children/preadolescents and suggests partially different pathways to specific forms of ruminative thoughts.