The purposes of this study were to determine whether knowledge of a child's family's marital status (divorced home/intact home/family status unknown) and/or teacher's marital status (single/divorced) would affect the teacher's ratings of that child's personality traits and predicted behaviors. The study sought to determine whether there was any interactive effect of rater marital status and knowledge of family background upon these teacher ratings. The subjects were 27 divorced and 27 married teachers of grades preschool through grade five. / To test the hypotheses, two instruments were employed. The Personality Trait Rating Scale (PTRS) and the Predicted Behavior in School Form (PBS) were used by the teachers to rate behaviors of a five year old child observed on a videotape. / Findings were: (1) knowledge of a child's family marital status did not have any significant effect on teachers' ratings on the PTRS or on the PBS. Mean rating scores on both instruments did not differ significantly among the three treatment conditions, (2) teacher marital status had no significant effect on ratings, i.e., mean ratings on the PTRS and PBS did not differ between married and divorced teachers, and (3) no interactive effects were found, i.e., teacher ratings across treatment groups did not differ significantly according to marital status of teacher. The findings of this study were unexpected. Contrary to some earlier research, teachers were not biased in their ratings by knowledge of a child's family's marital status. Similarly, married teachers who had not experienced the divorce process themselves were no more positively or negatively biased in their ratings with the two instruments used in the study than were the divorced teachers. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, Section: A, page: 0380. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75045 |
| Contributors | GOLDSTEIN-HENDLEY, SUSAN., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 95 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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