Children's Social Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Abstract

Systematic observations of naturally occurring child behavior in 78 child-parent dyads in Mexican families were factor analyzed, yielding five interpretable factors. These factors were very similar to behavior clusters found in studies of child behavior in other cultures, though the bipolar dimensional structures previously found were not replicated. The results suggest that across a number of different cultures, individual child behaviors tend to cluster into very similar distinctive patterns, but that the bipolar dimensional arrangements of these clusters found previously may have been determined more by the instruments used and/or the methods of data analysis than by the actual structure of child behavior within a given culture.