Investigation on the emotion and behavior difficulties among preschool children in Chengdu

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1009-6574.2016.01.015

Abstract：Objective To explore the prevalence of emotion and behavioral difficulties among pre-school children in Chengdu.Methods Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (given by parents) was administered to parents of students from 17 kindergartens (total 949 children) of Chengdu aged between 3-7 years old with cluster stratified random sampling.Results Approximately 21.3% of preschool chil-dren had difficulties in emotions ,the rates of boys and girls are 24.9% and 17.3% respectively with gender difference (χ2 = 7.298 ,P = 0.007).Scores of girls in emotion difficulties were higher than that of boys (t= -2.770 ,P= 0.006).Approximately 13.0% ,19.7% ,18.6% and 19.2% of preschool chil-dren had difficulties in conduct problems ,hyperactive problems ,peer problems and pro -social behav-iors problems respectively with no gender difference.Scores of boys in peer problems were higher than that of girls (t= 2.442 ,P= 0.015) ,and scores of girls in pro -social behaviors were higher than that of boys (t = 2.940 ,P = 0.003).Combination of age ,gender and family factors predicted 61.3% of out-come in emotional problems.Conclusions Emotion and behavior difficulties are obviously in parts of pre-school children.Girls tend to have more and higher prevalence of emotion difficulties ,but better peer re-lationship and pro -social development.Emotion problems are related with multi-factors in preschool children.