engleski

Assessing the child temperament: Contemporary challenges regarding the various raters

It is extremely important to know the children’s temperament since it determines the type of parental style and the environments' reactions to their behaviour. This raises the following question: what is the most appropriate way to measure children’s temperament within the same theoretical framework? When it comes to rating measures, given the children's young age, data can be obtained only from the ratings of signifact adult others since they know their children the best. However, once again the question arises that is crucial for this study - whose estimates should we rely on: parents' or teachers’? Therefore, this study seeks to examine the levels of the three dimensions of temperament among children of preschool age within the EAS-model and the comparison between the parents' and preschool teachers' ratings. Also, the relations between children's and preschool teachers' socio-demographic variables (gender, age, length of service) with children's temperament dimensions are analysed. An adapted and validated EAS questionnaire was used to assess children’s temperament for the purpose of this study. 224 parents and 15 teachers rated the temperament of 313 preschool children. Significant differences in the rates of activity and sociability of children have been determined. The parents rated these two dimensions significantly higher as opposed to preschool teachers, while there were no differences in the assessment of emotionality. Also, unlike the parents, preschool teachers rated a lower level of activity and a higher level of sociability in older children, and higher sociability in girls and higher activity in boys. There were no significant correlations between the socio-demographic variables of parents and preschool teachers with the children's temperament dimensions. The findings are discussed within the contextual characteristics of assessment and raters’ characteristics.

emotionality, activity, sociability, kindergarten, temperament, parents’ ratings, preschool teachers’ ratings, preschool children

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