Abstract

Social behaviours are critical to children’s developmental outcomes, yet the evidence may be difficult to interpret from either child self-report or reports by other people. We propose that any distinctions and commonalities among parent and child reports depend on content and context. The materials were reliable indicators of self-concepts and parent reports on children’s social behaviour at home from the Rowe Behaviour Rating Inventory. Participants were four- to thirteen-year-old girls and boys, and the parents or primary care-givers, in a selected location close to the Australian national average in socio-economic indicators. Results show that child self-reports and parent reports were generally not associated. The findings support the contextual hypothesis of distinct perspectives by parents and children. Findings also contribute to knowledge of children’s social self concepts that has practical considerations for health and education programmes. We conclude that it would be worthwhile to extend this work on dimensions of children’s social behaviour at home to cover other behaviours and the perspectives by other key people across diverse socio-economic locations.

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