The Childhood Assessment Tool—Electronic (CHAT-E) was developed by researchers at Northwestern University to study young children’s perceptions. The interactive, tablet-based CHAT-E evolved from the foundational Berkeley Puppet Interview (Measelle et al. 1998).
The Current CHAT-E
The most recent iterations of the CHAT-E focus on capturing natural, peer-like interactions that are central to the original Berkeley Puppet Interview (BPI) and its effectiveness in engaging young children. The current form of the CHAT-E presents two identical, 3D dog characters that express opposing statements and ask the child to choose one that is more like them. These animated characters move in synchrony with the audio to provide additional engagement. To ensure the intonations are engaging, neutral, and identical, we hired a voice actor to read the statements. The current CHAT-E is a cost-effective tool that is also highly interactive and can be implemented with minimal assessor training.
Northwestern research assistant supports child in navigating the CHAT-E app
Two dog characters introduce themselves at the start of the survey
The Evolution of the CHAT-E
The Berkeley Puppet Interview (Measelle et al. 1998)
The Berkeley Puppet Interview (BPI) is the most widely used evidence-based tool to assess young children’s self-perceptions. The BPI elicits children’s self-perceptions through a peer-like exchange between the child and two puppets, drawing from decades of research on the effectiveness of using visual tools like puppets to elicit responses from young children (Damon & Hart, 1988). In the BPI, two identical puppets present a child with opposing statements (one positive, one negative) in a dialogue format, intending to make it more comfortable for the child to respond to which puppets’ statement is more “like you” (Epstein et al., 2008). Since the tool was developed by Measelle et al. in 1998, the BPI has been used in hundreds of research studies, which collectively demonstrate that the BPI is a reliable and valid measure of children’s perceptions of themselves and of the contexts in which they participate starting as early as age three.
The Berkeley Puppet Interview uses puppets to engage children in research
The CHAT-E’s Humble Beginnings
When the Northwestern University Research Team was asked to study young children’s perceptions at scale, the Team decided to adapt the BPI to an electronic, tablet-based application. The first version of the CHAT-E app included a simple, two-dimensional animation with a neutral, robotic voice made to represent the live puppets in the BPI. After pilot testing this version with 105 kindergarteners, we observed that despite initial excitement about the talking animation, child engagement quickly waned, and researchers found high rates of children asking for breaks, skipping questions, or choosing to stop the assessment. Despite these challenges, children demonstrated that they understood the content of questions about children’s self-perceptions of school and college. This pilot test informed the many improvements that characterize the current CHAT-E app design and survey structure.
The original CHAT-E design included talking cat characters
