The purpose of this study was to examine the differences of the Problem Behaviors of Preschoolers according to Maternal Perception of Family Function and Social Support. Two research questions were posed:
1. Does the level of family function perceived...
The purpose of this study was to examine the differences of the Problem Behaviors of Preschoolers according to Maternal Perception of Family Function and Social Support. Two research questions were posed:
1. Does the level of family function perceived by mothers make any differences to the problem behaviors of the preschoolers?
2. Does the degree of social support provided to the mothers made any differences to the problem behaviors of preschoolers?
The subjects in this study were 217 preschoolers and 217 their mothers at five different early childhood institutions located in Busan. The preschoolers were at the Western age of 3 to 5.
One instrument used in this study to assess maternal perception of family function was Lee Kyung-ho(1999)'s inventory that modified Kim Yoon-hee(1990)'s adapted version of Olson, Porter & Lavee(1985)'s FACES-III. Another instrument used to evaluate the degree of social support was Park Ji-won(1985)'s Social Support Questionnaire. The third used to check the problem behaviors of the preschoolers was Oh Kyung-ja, Lee Hye-ryeon, Hong Kang-eui & Ha Eun-hye(1997)'s K-CBCL, which was a Korean standardized version of Achenbach (1991)'s CBCL.
The collected data were analyzed by the statistical package PASW 18.0, and frequency analysis and t-test were carried out.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, there were differences among the preschoolers in problem behaviors according to the level of family function. The preschoolers whose family function was better showed less problem behaviors than those whose family function was worse. As for differences in the subfactors of problem behaviors according to family function, there were less internalizing problems, less externalizing problems and less problems of the other categories with the group of preschoolers whose family function was better than with their counterparts whose family function was worse.
Second, there were no significant differences among the preschoolers in problem behaviors according to the degree of social support. Out of the subfactors of social support, however, the group of preschoolers who obtained less material support showed more externalizing problem behaviors than their counterparts that received more material support, and the group of preschoolers who received less evaluative support showed more internalizing, externalizing and the other problem behaviors than their counterparts who obtained more evaluative support.