Self-appraisal of Curiosity

A 41-item self-rating inventory was developed for the purpose of determining whether such an instrument could be used to identify groups of children differing in curiosity as effectively as could combined teacher and peer ratings. An estimated reliability of .91 had been obtained for the instrument by using the split-half method. The instrument was administered to groups of children differing in curiosity level who had been selected from 577 fifth-grade pupils attend ing suburban middle class schools. The groups were controlled for intelligence and had been subdivided by sex. In aU cases, the differences between the means of high-curiosity children and the means of low-curiosity children were sig nificant at the .05 level or better.