Migrant parents' assessment discrepancies in the social development of rural left-behind preschool children: A dual-source study in China
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71085/joclsi.05.01.96Keywords:
rural left-behind children, social development, informant discrepancy, dual-source assessment, migrant parentsAbstract
Accurate assessment of young children's social development is complicated in rural China when parents work away from home. This study examined agreement between migrant parents' evaluations and children's directly assessed social development among 120 rural left-behind preschoolers (60 public, 60 private kindergartens) in a county-level district of Shaanxi Province, China, using a five-dimension model (peer interaction, prosocial behavior, self-control, rule awareness, autonomy). Children were assessed on-site through structured tasks; migrant parents completed a parallel five-point Likert questionnaire; both sources were mapped onto a common 0-100 scale for comparison. Pearson correlations between parent and child scores were uniformly weak and non-significant (r = -.10 to .03, all Pearson p >= .28), indicating that parental evaluations carried little information about children's directly observed performance. Paired-samples t-tests on a common 0-100 scale showed migrant parents significantly overestimated self-control (t(119) = 12.14, p < .001, dz = 1.11) and autonomy, peer interaction, and prosocial behavior, while significantly underestimating rule awareness (t(119) = -3.59, p < .001, dz = -0.33). Overestimation was more pronounced when both parents had migrated and when grandparents were the primary caregivers. These findings suggest a structural, rather than motivational, information gap in long-distance caregiving, with implications for home-kindergarten communication.
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Data Availability Statement
The case-level data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (Yu Wang) upon reasonable request. All data have been fully anonymized and de-identified prior to release.
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