Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify child and parent’s temperamental latent classes, and to test the differences of the child s internalizing and externalizing problems and parent’s characters in the classes
Methods: A total of 808 children were recruited and their parents evaluated children s temperaments and behavioral problems along with their own temperaments and characters. Descriptive, correlation analysis and latent profile anlaysis was conducted for this study.
Results: First, three latent classes were identified: “moderate”, “socially sensitive”, and “free-wheeling”.
Second, children and their parents in the “socially sensitive” class, medium novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and high reward dependence had lowest internalizing and externalizing problems. And their parents had high self-directedness and high cooperativeness. Third, Children and their parents in the “free-wheeling” class, high novelty seeking and high reward dependence, had sub-clinical externalizing problems.
Conclusions: This study shows heterogeneus latent classes of child and parent s temperaments, and parental high self-directedness and high cooperativeness is related to child s low behavioral problems. It provides an implication for possible intervention strategies to decrease the child’s behavioral problems.