Abstract

Objectives: The present study represents an attempt to explain the mechanisms by which, parental conflict, a stressful life event in children's lives, may have an impact on children's psychological health. For this purpose, besides examining predictive relationships between in-dependent and criterion variables, we also evaluated the mediating and moderating interactions of three important variables, children's appraisals of parental conflict and emotional security in the family and their emotional coping strategies, indicative of perceived insecurity in the family, in the prediction of children's psychopathological symptoms. Method: This research used a stratified random sampling procedure with 413 fifth-grade primary school-children in the city of Tehran (220 girls & 193 boys).To assess children’s perceived emotional security in the family, their emotional coping strategies and their perception of parental conflict, the Security In the Family System (SIFS) Scale and the Children’s Perception of Interparental Conflict (CPIC) Scale was administered to them. To assess children’s affective and behavioral difficulties, mothers and teachers answered the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Results: Findings reveal a significant relationship between the children’s feeling of insecurity in the family as well as children’s appraisal of interparental conflicts on children’s affective and behavioral symptoms (p<0.01). In addition, the mediating role of appraisal in the relation between emotional security and affective symptoms, the mediating role of the emotional reaction in relation to conflict appraisal with the psychopathological symptoms of the child, as well as the interactional role of emotional insecurity and child appraisal of parental conflicts, were confirmed. Conclusion: Results indicate that in the context of parental conflict, children’s appraisal of interparental conflict is a risk or vulnerability factor and family emotional security is a protective factor for children’s psycho-pathological symptoms.

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to investigate the features of Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in a sample of Iranian children, which is a measure developed for children behavioral and affective difficulties assessment. Method: Ratings of teachers and mothers of about 413, ten to twelve years old children (193 boys and 220 girls) were gathered and evaluated. To assess the psychometric properties of this questionnaire, factor analysis and assessment of internal homogeneity was used. The relationships of each subscale with gender, normative data for this age group, and cut-off points were also calculated. Results: Moderate to high reliability was found for all subscales, however, support for the original five-factor structure of the measure was not found. Findings indicated adequate validity of mothers and teachers’ reports of relationships of subscales with each other. The total difficulties score was relatively higher for boys than girls according to the evaluations of both mothers and teachers. Conclusion: The Persian version of this questionnaire possesses a three factor structure with good psychometric characteristics. However, the use of this questionnaire in psychological studies in samples of Iranian children has been relatively neglected. The findings of the present research point to the significant value of this questionnaire for future studies.

Objectives: This research investigated the role of marital conflict and family emotional security in children’s physical and psychosocial health. Method: 413 fifth-grade school children in the city of Tehran (220 girls and 193 boys) with a mean age of 10.81, were selected using relative stratified random sampling. Mothers responded to the Overt Hostility/ O’Leary-Porter Scale (OPS) and the Child Health Questionnaire-Parent Form (CHQ-PF-28) and children responded to the Security In the Family System (SIFS) scales. Results: The findings indicated that marital conflict and family emotional insecurity have inverse relationship with children’s physical and psychosocial health. Also, marital conflict was a predictor (inversely) of children emotional security. Conclusion: Marital conflict leads to an insecure attachment of children to parents.