Psychological Assessment, Vol 35(3), Mar 2023, 229-241; doi:10.1037/pas0001196
Social interactions like group inclusion, receiving praise, or treating others kindly can be motivating and enjoyable. Social reward sensitivity, including motivation and enjoyment, varies between individuals. In early childhood, this variation may relate to differences in social experience and development. Social reward questionnaires have been developed to measure individual differences in social enjoyment for adolescents and adults, but no early childhood measure currently exists. Here, we describe the development and validation of the parent/caregiver report Social Reward Questionnaire–Early Childhood (SRQ-EC) for children aged 3–7 years. The SRQ-EC was developed to quantify both wanting (motivation) and liking (enjoyment) of social rewards, which were considered in separate factor models. For wanting and liking models, exploratory (N = 126) and confirmatory (N = 344) factor analyses identified that three subscales best represented early childhood social reward sensitivity, which were: Sociability (large groups), Admiration (praise and positive attention), and Prosocial Interactions and Compliance (kindness and rule following). SRQ-EC subscales were internally consistent (ω = 0.76–0.91, α = 0.75–0.88, mean interitem correlations = 0.38–0.60) with high test–retest reliability over 2-weeks (r = 0.66–0.85, all p