FACTORS AFFECTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL COMPETENCE IN THE FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILD.
Contributors: University of Texas at Austin.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 330
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Human Development.; Education, Educational Psychology.
Description: This descriptive correlational study investigated the effects of the factors: SES, the home environment, maternal age, maternal education, maternal stress, social support for the mother, maternal attitudes, family size, and the child's birth order on the development of social competence in the four-year old child. Social competence was assessed by measuring behaviors relevant to the four-year old child in the areas of cognitive competence, physical competence, acceptance, and interpersonal relationships. To gain a more comprehensive description of the child, ratings of the child's social competence were collected from the child, the child's mother, and the child's teacher.

Instruments used were the: Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children, Iowa Social Competency Scale: Preschool Form, Four Factor Index of Social Status, Home Screening Questionnaire, Perceived Stress Scale, and Satisfaction With Parenting Role.

Subjects were 201 mothers and their four-year old children who attended state licensed day care centers in Alabama and who met the criteria for inclusion in the study. Quota sampling was used to provide four-year old male and female children heterogeneous for socioeconomic status and homeogeneous for age and race.

The results of the stepwise multiple regression analysis supported the rejection of the null hypothesis. Additional analysis were performed, using correlational statistics, to assess for simple correlations among the independent variables and the social competence.

These findings suggest that multiple factors within the child's environment were better predictors of the development of social competence than were single factors. In this study, the most important factor in the development of the child's overall social competence was the home environment followed by the social support available for the mother and family size. SES and maternal education were significantly related to cognitive competence while high levels of maternal stress and maternal attitudes were significant to undesirable behavior and had low or insignificant relationships with cognitive and physical competence. The findings offer evidence that the child, the child's mother, and the child's teacher can all be used to rate the child's social competence and contributes to the broad assessment of the child.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-02, Section: B, page: 0662.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1989.

School code: 0227.