How to appropriately measure the level of engagement of children during a study ? I know that several elements (time-on-task, performance, response time, etc...) might be fairly correlated with engagement, but how can we get a reference measure of engagement for studies on young children ?
In adults, one option is to use subjective questionnaires at the end of the study to get an estimate of the level of engagement, but this methodology is not possible with young kids.
As in research on emotion, would it be possible to ask to a group of external judges to evaluate the level of engagement of the child on a Likert scale (1-5), and to use the average of the index of engagement as a measure of engagement ? (an additional control could be to use the average only when the value of a Cohen's Kappa would be high ?)
I would use various smileys before and after the study (or for if necessary) to at least measure the impication child. "Do you still perform this task?"
Like this : http://images.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://us.123rf.com/450wm/sparkusdesign/sparkusdesign1602/sparkusdesign160200010/52561457-ic-nes-emoji--motic-nes-pour-le-taux-du-niveau-de-satisfaction-cinq-smileys-de-qualit-pour-l-utilisa.jpg%3Fver%3D6&imgrefurl=http://fr.123rf.com/clipart-vecteurs/smiley_vert_rouge.html&h=225&w=450&tbnid=s8t_71NRaG72GM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=180&docid=jgy9egjy9PLOdM&client=safari&usg=__gnHGhMhKc3BeagJMxxr9Uv0nLKI=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWhJHQgdvPAhXF1hQKHRveAIYQ9QEIHjAA
You might want to check whether such a scale (or a related scale) is contained in my Handbook of Management Scales: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Handbook_of_Management_Scales
You may want to go through this study as it may relate to what you are interested in;
Children’s Engagement within the Preschool Classroom and Their Development of Self-Regulation
Amanda P. Williford, Jessica E. Vick Whittaker, Virginia E. Vitiello, and Jason T. Downer
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