Korean Standardization of Parent Temperament Questionnaire for Children / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: One of the factors that obstructs active progress of the temperament study in Korea is lack of the standardized assessment tools. Therefore, this study was designed and conducted for the purpose of Korean standardization of "Parental Temperament Questionnaire(PTQ)", which was developed by Thomas and Chess, to assess the temperament of children between the ages of 3 and 7 years through parental questionnaire. METHOD: The samples consisted of 1,175 children who were attending nurseries nationwide. PTQ was translated into Korean language by the authors and distributed to the parents of these children, along with "Toddler Temperament Scale(TTS)" and "Yale Child Inventory(YCI)" which had been previously standardized by different investigators. The reliability and validity of the Korean version of PTQ were tested. RESULTS: Test-retest reliability, item-category correlations and internal consistency of the Korean version of PTQ were generally satisfactory. Correlations between the perceived temperament and the rated temperament were statistically significant in all temperamental categories except distractibility. The correlation between PTQ and TTS was statistically significant in all categories. The 9 categories of PTQ correlated variously with 11 subscales of preschool behavioral assessment of YCI. CONCLUSIONS:The Korean version of PTQ is a standardized tool to assess the temperament of children between ages 3 and 7 years, which will be a useful basic tool for the study of temperament of Korean children.

Temperamental Characteristics of Asthmatic Children in Korea / 신경정신의학

The objective of this study was to determine temperamental characteristics of children with bronchial asthma. An earlier preliminary study(Kim SP, Ferrara A, Chess S, 1980) results show that the asthmatic children, as a group, are significantly different from two other control groups (I. children with eczema, allergic rhinitis, or both without asthma: II. normal healthy children in their temperamental profile). The parents of 85 Korean children with bronchial asthma, ages 3 to 7 years, completed the Korean version of Parental Temperamental Questionnaire developed by Thomas and Chess. The data collected were of ordinal type, ranked from 1 to 7 and the non-parametric Mann-whitney U Test was utilized. Any child with a suspected history or diagnosis of premature birth, organic brain syndrome, mental retardation, childhood psychosis, congenital physical anomaly, hereditary disease or any other medical or surgical conditions, other than asthma, requiring continuous physicians care was excluded from the study population. The results showed that asthmatic female children were characterized by lower adaptability and lower threshold of responsiveness. And 22% of asthmatic children were of the difficult type, compared to 11% of normal children. Both groups were statistically different In terms of temperamental constellation. The findings strongly suggest the existence of a distinct temperamental profile of asthmatic children. Early detection of the profile may be of great value for parents and child health care providers in understanding the asthmatic children's correct developmental needs and in determining appropriate parenting approaches for the chronically ill children at the risk of behavioral disorders.