This paper presents the validation of Preschool Competition Questionnaire (PCQ). The PCQ was completed by the childcare teachers of 780 French-speaking children between the ages of 36 and 71 months. The results of exploratory factor analysis suggest three dimensions involving neither physical nor relational aggression: other-referenced competition, task-oriented competition, and maintenance of dominance hierarchy. The three dimensions are positively correlated with dominance ratings and are linked to social adjustment. Girls are just as competitive as boys in the dimensions of other-referenced competition and dominance hierarchy maintenance. Task-oriented competition is relatively more important in older children and girls. Classification analysis reveals that the children who obtain the highest dominance ratings are the ones who employ a variety of competition strategies. 1. Introduction In highly industrialized societies, interindividual competition is omnipresent, for example, at work, in sports, and at school. Several researchers have adopted a multidimensional approach to the study of competition among university students. The Griffin-Pierson [1] questionnaire on competition explores two dimensions, interpersonal competitiveness and goal competitiveness, with respect to performance in both academics and games. Interpersonal competitiveness is defined as the desire to do better than others and to win in interpersonal situations and the enjoyment of interpersonal competition. Goal competitiveness is defined as the desire to excel, achieve a goal, and do one’s best. The two competition perspectives are not mutually exclusive: “They are ways of construing achievement situations, and thus are viewed as general dispositional tendencies to perceive achievement situations in a certain manner” [1]. Ryckman and his collaborators [2–4] have also highlighted two dimensions of competition in sports: the hypercompetitive attitude scale and the personal development competitive attitude scale. Hypercompetitiveness refers to the indiscriminate need to compete and win (and to avoid losing) at all costs as a means of maintaining or enhancing feelings of self-worth, with attendant orientations of manipulation, aggressiveness, exploitation, and derogation of others across a myriad of situations [4]. Personal development competitiveness refers to an attitude in which the primary focus in competition is not upon winning, but rather upon using the competitive experience to foster personal growth. The emphasis is on self-discovery and self-improvement, and not on
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