KUAI-Kids: Developing a Measurement Instrument for Children’s Knowledge, Use, and Attitudes Toward Generative AI Chatbots

The increasing presence of generative artificial intelligence in children’s lives highlights the need for age-appropriate measurement instruments to assess their knowledge, use, and atti-tudes toward these technologies. This study introduces and validates KUAI-Kids, a question-naire on ChatGPT knowledge, use, and attitudes for children in middle childhood and early adolescence (ages 7 to 14; N = 310), based on a previously validated adult scale but with substantially revised and extended items for children. Confirmatory factor analyses support-ed unidimensional structures for the Knowledge and Use scales, both showing good model fit and internal consistency. For the Attitude scale, a two-factor solution emerged, distinguish-ing Enthusiastic and Cautious Attitudes. Both Attitude subscales demonstrated good model fit and reliability. Latent correlations revealed expected associations: Knowledge and Use were moderately positively correlated; Enthusiastic Attitudes were strongly associated with Use, while a moderately strong correlation was observed between Cautious Attitudes and Knowledge. Exploratory analyses indicated higher Enthusiastic Attitudes in boys and higher Knowledge, Use, and Cautious Attitudes scores in older students. The KUAI-Kids offers a psychometrically sound tool to study children’s engagement with AI chatbots and to inform educational interventions and longitudinal research on AI literacy.