Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), cilt.40, sa.2, ss.287-298, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
Individual differences in environmental sensitivity (ES) moderate the effect of family environment on children's adjustment. Research on ES in early childhood is limited and mostly relies on mother reports. This preregistered study investigated the association between mothers' and fathers' perceptions of their child's ES and its moderating role in the relation between parenting and child behavioral problems among 271 mother-father dyads with a preschooler. Results showed a strong correlation (r = .75) between fathers' and mothers' reports of child ES. Alongside satisfactory parameters from the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, these findings suggest that the scale effectively captures individual differences in child ES across informants, providing the first empirical evidence for its use with fathers. A single-parent perspective might also be reliable, depending on research needs and available resources. Pertaining the moderating role of combined child ES, findings suggest that the child ES significantly interacted with maternal acceptance on internalizing symptoms reported by both parents, with highly sensitive children exhibiting more internalizing symptoms under low maternal (but not paternal) warm and loving behaviors. When combining fathers and mothers' acceptance, a similar trend was found. Finding suggests that while the inclusion of fathers parenting-related variables did not provide significant information beyond the mothers' report, integrating mothers and fathers' perspectives on child's characteristics may offer a more comprehensive understanding than relying on informant-specific variables. Potential challenges in combining reports, due to differences in missing responses between mothers and fathers, are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).