Development and psychometric evaluation of the parent-report preschool defending behaviors questionnaire in Chinese preschoolers

Although defending behaviors represent early-emerging prosocial responses that can effectively counter peer aggression or bullying, age-appropriate measures for preschoolers remain scarce. Across two studies, we developed the Parent-report Preschool Defending Behaviors Questionnaire (PDBQ-P) and conducted an initial psychometric evaluation in a Chinese preschool sample. Study 1 ( N = 927 parents; M age = 4.92 years) used Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) to identify the dimensional structure of defending behaviors. Bootstrapped EGA supported a stable four-dimensional structure, including comforting victims, reporting to authority, aggressing against bullies , and physically interrupting bullies . Study 2 ( N = 752 parents at the 5-month follow-up) examined reliability, validity, and item-level invariance within the EGA framework. All subscales showed adequate internal consistency (αs = .66 – .88) and modest test–retest stability, as indexed by the Pearson correlations ( r s = .39 – .53) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs = .39 – .53). Construct validity was supported by positive associations with attention to others’ feelings ( r s = .17 – .44) and prosocial behaviors ( r s = .14 – .66), and differential associations with externalizing problems. Confirmatory factor analysis provided additional support for the EGA-derived four-factor structure. No items were flagged as noninvariant across time or gender within the permutation-based EGA framework. Overall, these studies developed the PDBQ-P as a parent-report measure of preschoolers’ defending behaviors and provided initial evidence for its psychometric properties and for the distinct forms of defending in early childhood.