A MULTIMETHOD STUDY OF PROBLEM BEHAVIOR AMONG THAI AND AMERICAN CHILDREN IN SCHOOL - TEACHER REPORTS VERSUS DIRECT OBSERVATIONS

Previous literature describes Thai children as unusually polite, defer ent, and behaviorally restrained. Yet, in a recent study employing tea cher reports, Thai children were reported to show many more behavior p roblems than American children. Such a finding may reflect culture-lin ked differences in the perspective of Thai versus American teachers. T o explore this possibility, we used trained observers to conduct direc t observations of Thai and American children's school behavior, and we obtained teacher reports on the same children. Observational results were precisely the opposite of previous and present teacher-report fin dings: Observers reported twice as much problem behavior and off-task behavior in American children as in their Thai age-mates. This pattern may reflect Thai-U.S. differences in teachers' style, societal values and practices, even child temperament. The findings support the value of direct behavior observation in cross-national research on child pr oblems.