Abstract
Currently there is no suitable measure to assess the frequency of childhood rigid behaviours. Furthermore, there is a paucity of research surrounding factors that may affect the frequency of these behaviours. The first aim of this study was therefore to create a psychometrically-sound, parent-defined measure of common childhood rigid behaviour and also to find out parental responses to these behaviours. A parent-defined measure was created and distributed to 110 parents of children aged between four and six years. This led to the development of a final 20-item measure of child rigid behaviour which was shown to have good psychometrics. The second aim of the study was to correlate frequency of rigid behaviour with other measures relating to child anxiety, parental magical ideation, parental obsessive compulsiveness and parental style. The results indicated that frequency of child rigid behaviours significantly correlated with child anxiety as well as parental obsessive compulsiveness and an Authoritarian parental style. No correlation was found between rigid behaviour and parental magical ideation. In conclusion, the study produced a new tool that assesses the frequency of child rigid behaviours in a non clinical sample. The study found that child anxiety is associated with a child’s frequency of rigid behaviour and external parental factors are also additionally associated with child rigidity.