Poster #121 - Relations Between Ethiopian Children’s Temperament, Social Functioning, and Academic Experiences

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

The overwhelming majority of developmental data come from children who live in the United States or other similar Western, developed/high-income countries. As a result, very little is known about the developmental experiences of children who reside in other societies and contexts. This greatly limits the generalizability of theories and other models of human development. In order to begin to fill this gap, we investigated the associations of children’s temperament with their social functioning and academic experiences in 152 Ethiopian children (Mage = 5.76 years, SD = 1.50, 55% male) who lived in an extremely materially poor section of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Teachers (N = 11) reported on children’s temperament (i.e., effortful control and anger/frustration), prosocial behavior, behavioral problem (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems), and school performance (i.e., school liking, school participation, and academic achievement). Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on each measure of the construct to evaluate whether these measures were valid for our sample. After dropping items with non-significant factor loadings, each measurement model had an acceptable model fit, thus providing some evidence of validity. Cronbach’s alphas of these measures ranged between 0.69 and 0.89, suggesting acceptable levels of reliability. The multivariate regression model (see Table 1), controlling for the nested data structure (i.e., dummy-coded teacher/classroom) and children’s age and sex, indicated that children’s effortful control was negatively related to their internalizing and externalizing problems and positively related to their prosocial behavior, school liking, school participation, and academic achievement. Interestingly, anger was positively related to externalizing problem, school participation, and academic achievement. There was some evidence that the interaction between effortful control and anger was related to school liking (b = 0.05, SE = 0.03, p = .055): The positive association between effortful control and school liking tended to be stronger among children with high (+1 SD: b = 0.22, SE = 0.05, p < .001) levels of anger as compared to those with low (-1 SD: b = 0.11, SE = 0.04, p = .013) levels of anger. With a few exceptions, this study replicated the associations of temperament with social functioning and academic experiences documented in Western or developed/high-income countries in a sample of Ethiopian children living in an extremely materially poor area. These findings provide supportive evidence for the importance of children’s temperament, particularly effortful control, in their social and academic development across geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts.

Authors

• Carlos Valiente, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Longfeng Li, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Dame Abera

• Tirussew Teferra, Addis Ababa University