Relationships between Children's Social Development and Day Care Quality, Child-care Experience and Family Characteristics

탁아기관의 질, 탁아경험 및 가족특성과 아동의 사회성발달과의 관계

The purpose of this study was: (1) to examine relationships between social development and day care quality, child-care experience and family characteristics, and (2) to investigate the explainability of those related variables for social development. Subjects for this study were 252 4-year-old children and their mothers from 32 day care centers in Seoul. Harms & Clifford's Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale was used to measure the quality of day care. The main results were as follows: (1) Day care quality, child-care experience and family characteristics were significantly related to social development. (2) Child's gender, months of age, mother's child rearing attitude, the length of child-care experience, overall quality of day care, and group size significantly predicted social development. 33％ of the variance of social development was explained by these variables. The relative influence of these variables to the prediction of social development was about the same.