The Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II: Development, Factor Structure, and Psychometrics

By T. Kashdan, M. Gallagher, Paul J Silvia, B. Winterstein, William E. Breen, Daniel Terhar, M. Steger. Journal of Research in Personality, 2009

623 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Given curiosity’s fundamental role in motivation, learning, and well-being, we sought to refine the measurement of trait curiosity with an improved version of the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI; Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004). A preliminary pool of 36 items was administered to 311 undergraduate students, who also completed measures of emotion, emotion regulation, personality, and well-being. Factor analyses indicated a two factor model—motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences (Stretching; 5 items) and a willingness to embrace the novel, uncertain, and unpredictable nature of everyday life (Embracing; 5 items). In two additional samples (ns = 150 and 119), we cross-validated this factor structure and provided initial evidence for construct validity. This includes positive correlations with personal growth, openness to experience, autonomy, purpose in life, self-acceptance, psychological flexibility, positive affect, and positive social relations, among others. Applying item response theory (IRT) to these samples (n = 578), we showed that the items have good discrimination and a desirable breadth of difficulty. The item information functions and test information function were centered near zero, indicating that the scale assesses the mid-range of the latent curiosity trait most reliably. The findings thus far provide good evidence for the psychometric properties of the 10-item CEI-II.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1ef44e628cdb2cdaca565a75b3303137ecc9815

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The five-dimensional curiosity scale: Capturing the bandwidth of curiosity and identifying four unique subgroups of curious people (2018, neutral): “…psychometric properties of measures such as the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II - the embracing of stress in novel and challenging situations subscale had smaller correlations with distress and healthy emotion regulation strategies than the stretching subscale; Kashdan et al., 2009).”
Disentangling Curiosity: Dimensionality, Definitions, and Distinctions from Interest in Educational Contexts (2014, methodology): “In a few definitions, the need for knowledge or information was described as not just an identification of the gap, but also a propensity toward seeking such gaps (Kashdan et al. 2009).”
Brief assessment of schizotypy: Developing short forms of the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales (2011, neutral): “…complement the HEXACO, we included several narrow traits, particularly measures of trait curiosity (the revised Curiosity and Exploration Inventory; Kashdan et al., 2009), sensation seeking (a brief scale developed by Hoyle, Stephenson, Palmgreen, Lorch, & Donohew, 2002), and hypomania (the…”
Exploring Nostalgia's Influence on Psychological Growth (2014, methodology): “Second, we included the Exploration Inventory (EI; Green & Campbell, 2000) to assess growth-oriented behavioral intentions.”
Cultivating an understanding of curiosity as a seed for creativity (2020, methodology): “General curiosity was measured using the curiosity and exploration inventory-II [54]; creative self-efficacy was measured using the short scale of creative self (SSCS; Karwowski, [1 ]); and creative imagination was measured using the Imagination index [55].”
Process Account of Curiosity and Interest: A Reward-Learning Perspective (2018, background): “As indicated in our paper, there are a number of trait-level scales that aimed to understand the individual differences in different aspects of curiosity and interest (Kashdan et al. 2009; Litman 2008).”
Links between intellectual humility and acquiring knowledge (2020, methodology): “The Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II (Kashdan et al., 2009) was used to assess trait”
To nostalgize: mixing memory with affect and desire (2015, background): “…ordinary) event condition reported greater growth-related self-perceptions (i.e., self-expansion, curiosity, inclination toward new experiences; Kashdan et al., 2009) and stronger growth-related behavioral intentions (i.e., to engage in novel, self-expansive activities; Luke, Sedikides, &…”
How serious is the ‘carelessness’ problem on Mechanical Turk? (2019, methodology): “We did something similar on the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II (CEI-II; Kashdan et al., 2009).”
An IRT analysis of motive questionnaires: The Unified Motive Scales (2012, background): “…with strangers than with familiar people”) had a uniqueness of .85 and did not load substantially on any factor, which could point to a distinct curiosity motive beyond the five motives represented by the factor solution (Gubler & Bischof, 1991; Kashdan et al., 2009; Schneider & Schmalt, 2000).”
Introducing the construct curiosity for predicting job performance (2013, background): “Furthermore, epistemic curiosity is uncorrelated with anger and depression and uncorrelated or slightly negatively correlated with anxiety (Kashdan et al., 2009; Litman & Spielberger, 2003; Litman & Jimerson, 2004; Litman & Pezzo, 2007).”
A Case for Domain-Specific Curiosity in Mathematics (2019, background): “Trait curiosity describes the habits of mind, affect, and behavior displayed by individuals considered to have generally curious personalities (Kashdan et al. 2009; Silvia 2008).”