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Drawing on research on personal initiative in adults, this paper present the conceptualization of personal initiative in the middle childhood, and the development and validation of an eight-item teacher and parent rating scale of children's and adolescents' personal initiative. The psychometric properties and construct validity of the measure were tested in two samples of children in middle childhood (N = 1069–1657) and middle childhood to adolescence (N = 1533). Both the teacher and parent rating scale showed good item characteristics. Results of confirmatory factor analyses supported their hypothesized factorial structure. The agreement of teacher and parent ratings was satisfactory. Evidence on the construct validity of the scale was further derived from a nomological network comprising control cognitions, motivational orientations, and cognitive ability. The measures proved to be invariant across school years and raters. We discuss several avenues for future research on personal initiative in the fields of development and education.
Academic personal initiative (API) has rarely been studied with regard to literacy development. The purpose of this longitudinal study was therefore to examine the unique effects of API on the development of word comprehension as an indicator of word reading. To this end, the effects of previous word comprehension, intrinsic reading motivation, and basic cognitive ability (i.e., processing speed) were controlled for. A total of 1,515 German students participated in a longitudinal assessment starting in Grades 1 to 3, with a second point of measurement nine months later. Latent change score analyses revealed positive associations between API and gains in word comprehension, both in the total sample and at all grade levels. These relations were robust against the effects of previous word comprehension and intrinsic reading motivation. The findings suggest that children play an active role in their own reading development. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.