Poster #212 - Teacher and Parent Ratings of Shyness and Effortful Control in Latino/a Children in Head Start

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Child temperament is commonly used as a predictor variable or covariate in psychological and educational studies, because characteristics such as shyness and effortful control have clear and lasting impacts on children’s experiences and success in school (Rudasill & Rimm-Kaufman, 2009). One of the most widely used measures of temperament is the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001), which relies on parent report. Recently, researchers have made minor adaptations to enable teachers to report on children’s temperament. Previous studies suggest, however, that teachers and parents rate children differently due in part to their unique perspectives. These studies have primarily examined white, middle-class children, and have used the English version of the CBQ (Clark et al., 2016; Rudasill et al., 2014). It is possible, however, that the measurement of temperament is susceptible to cultural and ethnic differences. In addition, few studies have included data from both the English and Spanish versions of the CBQ. Using a linguistically diverse sample of Latino/a children from low-income households, the current study compares parent and teacher ratings of preschoolers’ shyness and effortful control and examines differences by child gender and primary home language.

This study was conducted as part of a larger study in 21 Head Start classrooms in the southwestern United States. Head Start provides preschool education for families living at or below the federal poverty level. All children in the sample (n=161) were Hispanic/Latin@; they spoke Spanish (57%) and English as their primary home languages; 53% were female; mean age was 4.4 years. Parents completed three scales from the CBQ: Shyness, Attentional Focusing, and Inhibitory Control. The latter two were combined into an Effortful Control Index (Olson et al., 2005). Parents responded to statements about their child using a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = extremely untrue to 7 = extremely true). For children whose primary home language was Spanish (n=92), parents completed the questionnaire in Spanish (adapted from Carranza, González-Salinas, & Ato, 2013). Internal consistency was good for both Shyness (a=.87 and .81 in English and Spanish, respectively) and Effortful Control (a=.86 and .81). Several items were adapted for teachers to reflect the school context. Eight months into the school year, a subsample of children’s teachers (n=117) completed this revised CBQ. Internal consistency was high for both Shyness (13 items; a=.92) and Effortful Control (16 items; a=.91).

Preliminary results identified gender differences in Effortful Control ratings, but not Shyness (see Table 1). Teachers rated children higher than parents in terms of Effortful Control, t(110)=-2.84, p<.01, but parent and teacher Shyness ratings did not differ, t(110) = 1.72, p=.089. Regression analyses suggest that both rater and gender predict Effortful Control (Table 2). Parent ratings of effortful control did not differ based on questionnaire language, t(159) = 0.60, p=.551. The difference between shyness ratings in English (M=3.6, SD=1.2) and Spanish (M=3.9, SD=0.9) approached significance, t(159) = -1.93, p=.056. Additional analyses will investigate measurement invariance using structural equation modeling to determine whether differences are due to measurement error.

Author

• Anne Blackstock-Bernstein, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author