Chinese Children And Adolescents' Personality Features

Based on three rounds of researches on preschool children,primary school and junior middle school students' personality assessment by qualitative research programs like free description and adjective lists and quantitative research program of factor-analysis,Chinese Children and Adolescents' Personality Development Scales have already possessed ideal indicators in reliability and validity.There are 3 studies shown below:Study 1:To establish national norm.The reference group of the norm is constructed via a stratified random sampling.The samples are selected from the four kinds of regions distinguished by "China Development Indices".Based on the proportion of regional population,researchers select representative provinces from each region,and then representative cities from the selected provinces.Representative kindergartens,primary schools and junior middle schools are selected from each city above,and subjects are tested.In the light of the differences among grade×gender groups,norm referenced scores are distinguished.Study 2:After acquisition of preschool children,primary school and junior middle school students' personality scores,this part of research use common-item non-equivalent test equating design to equate three parts of respective personality dimensions into the same scale.Study 3:According to the equating scores,a latent class analysis is accomplished to discuss Chinese children and adolescents' personality types and the development characteristics.Conclusions are as follows:1 High reliabilities of three scales are proved by large samples.Firstly,respective personality dimensions scores are transformed into percentile rank in different reference groups of the norm.Secondly,the percentile rank is turned into normalized standard scores and T scores.Henceforth,the personality score of individual or group of children and adolescents can be derived to T scores,which are applied to locate the relative position in reference groups of the norm.2 Based on the minimum equating errors and preschool children scale,respective personality dimension scores are equated by Tucker linear equating method.It is found that the development trend of each personality dimension has the following characteristics:First,personality in transition stages is more likely to change,such as transition from kindergarten to primary school,and transition from primary school to junior middle school.All personality dimension scores decline after transition from kindergarten to primary school,and increase after transition from primary school to junior middle school.Second,on the mean-level,personality development trends of trans-stage of preschool,primary school and junior middle school are as follows:Intellect characteristics decline;Agreement and extraversion increase;Conscientiousness declines first and then increases;And emotional stability has gender differences,in which girls increase first and then decline,but boys keep stable.Third,on the rank-order stability,extraversion are the most stable,and all the other dimension have been interactively effected by development stage and gender,which shows a low rank-order stability and a plasticity stage for children and adolescents.3 According to Robins' theory of self-control and adaptation as well as the posterior probability of subjects allocation by latent class analysis,Chinese children and adolescents' personality can be optimally divided into three types:undercontrolled,overcontrolled and resilient.The resilient personality type has the highest scores on all five factors and behaves adaptively.The overcontrolled personality type has the second highest factor scores on agreement,intellectual characteristics,conscientiousness and extraversion,and because of lack of flexible emotional expression,such type has low emotional stability.The undercontrolled personality type has the lowest scores on most factors.The overcontrolled personality type is the majority.The proportion of resilient personality type has a significant trend of increasing with upgrading while the other two types decrease.The resilient personality type proportion of girls is higher than that of boys significantly,and the other two types proportion of girls is lower than those of boys.