PARENTAL DESCRIPTIONS OF CHILDRENS PERSONALITY - A 5-FACTOR MODEL CLASSIFICATION

The paper reports the Flemish contribution to the first phase of an in ternational collaborative research project operating as the Internatio nal Consortium for the Study of Developmental Antecedents of the Five- Factor-Model (ICDA-FFM). Free parental oral descriptions of their own children's personality are recorded, transcribed, segmented in units a nd classified with a category system comprising fourteen major categor ies, further subdivided in facets and clusters. Three quarters of the parental descriptors for children aged 3, 6, 9 and 12 could be classif ied as instances of various facets of the Five-Factor Model (FFM). Com parison of frequencies of classified descriptors across age levels sho ws a significant increase of descriptors indicating Conscientiousness and a decrease of references to Extraversion. Analysis at the facet le vel points towards an age related shift within Extraversion from activ ity to sociability descriptors. The relationship of categorised free c hild descriptions to the FFM is illustrated by their consistent patter n of correlations with factor scores derived from parental ratings of the same children on 25 scales (Mervielde, 1992) marking the FFM. More over, most of the free descriptors classified in categories regarded t o be beyond the scope of the FFM, show significant and plausible corre lations with the factor scores derived from parental ratings of the sa me children.