CHARACTEROLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL SELF-BLAME IN CHILDREN - ASSESSMENT AND DEVELOPMENT CONSIDERATIONS

A new instrument, the Why It Happened questionnaire, was developed for assessing characterological and behavior self-blame in two samples of third- through ninth-grade children (Sample 1: n = 121; sample 2: n = 322). Children's responses were very consistent within specific class es of negative events but only moderately consistent across time. Expl oratory and confirmatory factor analyses of open-ended and self-rating responses, respectively, revealed that children's self-blame attribut ions were only moderately consistent across different classes of negat ive events, and that children's tendency to make characterological and behavioral attributions were unrelated for academic events and modera tely correlated for social events. Multiple regression revealed that c haracterological self-blame about academic and social events were not significantly related to self-reported depression until ninth grade. I mplications for cognitive diathesis-stress models of depression for ch ildren are discussed.