Measuring gratitude in children

Abstract

Gratitude is a rich socioemotional construct that emerges over development beginning in early childhood. Existing measures of children’s gratitude as a trait or behavior may be limited because they do not capture different aspects of gratitude moments (i.e., awareness, thoughts, feelings, and actions) and the way that these facets appear in children. The current study evaluates a battery of new measures assessing children’s gratitude to address these limitations. Parent-child dyads (N=101; children aged 6–9) completed a lab-based assessment followed by a 7-day online parental diary and 18-month follow-up survey. In addition to newly developed measures of children’s gratitude, the battery included indicators of convergent, concurrent, divergent, and predictive validity. Results demonstrate the complexity of gratitude as a construct and the relative benefits and limits of various assessment modalities. Implications for the measurement of children’s gratitude and suggestions for future research on the development of gratitude are discussed.

Gratitude conversations: An experimental trial of an online parenting tool

“…Parents' daily reports of their children's displays of gratitude (i.e., defined via the four elements of notice-think-feel-do) showed significant individual differences, but not gender or age difference, in a relatively privileged sample of 6-8 years-olds (Hussong et al, 2018b). Moreover, parent-reported daily gratitude was related to parent-and child self-report of children's trait gratitude and with gratitude displayed in an observational lab task (Hussong et al, 2018c). Thus, the definition of gratitude moments as comprised of notice-think-feel-do elements can be reliably measured in a way that captures individual differences, is correlated with widely-recognized measures of trait gratitude from multiple reporters, and is associated with gratitude acts observed in vivo.…”

“…Additional items assessed parents' (a) showing positive reactions to children's gratitude expressions, (b) involving the child in activities that promote gratitude, (c) modeling gratitude, (d) sharing an experience of feeling grateful with the child, and (e) pointing out to the child his or her privilege. For each item, parents rated how often they engaged in each socialization behavior during the past week on a 5-point response scale, ranging from 'not at all' to '11 times or more' (Hussong et al, 2018c). Items were averaged to create indicators of parents' socialization behaviors (α=.94).…”

“…).-Parents and children each completed two scales assessing children's gratitude. The first focused on the frequency of gratitude moments in the prior week (Hussong et al, 2018c) reflecting children's engagement in the notice (e.g., 'My child shared an experience in which they were thankful for something'), think (e.g., 'My child seemed to realize that a gift or object was given to them without their earning it or being owed the gift'), feel (e.g. 'My child expressed their positive feelings when they received something special'), and do (e.g., 'My child showed surprise and delight when they received something from someone else') elements of gratitude.…”

Parenting and the development of children’s gratitude

“…Given the relative weaknesses of any one modality, we developed a battery of measures to assess the notice-think-feel-do elements of gratitude in children and young teenagers. The battery included surveys completed by parents and, for older children, self-report surveys, as well as scenariobased measures and observational tasks (Hussong et al, 2019). Through surveys, parents reported how frequently their children recognized receiving (noticing) or the effort behind a gift (thinking), felt positively about receiving ( feeling), and expressed gratitude (doing).…”

What Is Gratitude? Ingratitude Provides the Answer

“…For example, the Gratitude Assessment Questionnaire (Tudge & Freitas, 2010) was designed to assess the extent to which respondents feel that they should reciprocate to those who have helped them or given them something and has good psychometric properties (Liang et al, under review) but it has only been used in two publications (Mendonça, Palhares, Tudge, & Freitas, 2018;O'Brien et al, 2018). Similarly, Hussong and her colleagues (Hussong et al, 2019b;Hussong et al, 2020) have reported results using parents' reports of their "daily gratitude socialization behaviors" and their reports of their "child's daily gratitude" (Hussong et al, 2019a), as well as data from the Child Trends' Adolescent Gratitude Scale (Child Trends, 2013). However, most of the items on each of these scales fit better with appreciation than gratitude as a virtue (some items involve expressing thanks, others are about good manners, others are about the extent of privileges and possessions, and so on).…”