An Approach to the Measurement of Insecurity
The term "insecurity" and its correlative "desire for security" appear extensively in child development literature. Insecurity is listed frequently among the possible causes of many behavior problems. Careful analysis of the literature, however, reveals that there is little agreement as to the meaning of these terms and that methods of identification and measurement of insecurity are not well de veloped. Since it appears highly probable that desire for greater security plays an im portant part in the behavior of children, it would be most helpful if we could develop more precise methods of classifying children with respect to the strength or frequency with which this desire motivates their be havior. We need methods by which we can discriminate between relatively secure and the relatively insecure children.