The Effects of Children's Family Structure Status on the Development of Stereotypes by Teachers.

The use of ratings of children by judges is pervasive in the area of father absence research. The interpretation of such ratings, though, is not always straightforward. The possibility that teacher ratings of children may indicate a stereotype on the part of teachers was investigated by showing 30 teachers a videotape that focused on the social interaction of an eight-year-old boy. Half of the teachers were given a background information sheet that indicated he was from a divorced home, while the other half were informed that he was from an intact home. The teachers were asked to view the videotape and then to rate the boy on a wide range of 11 personality traits (e.g., anxiety, social deviance, and happiness) and to predict what his behavior would be like in five different school situations (e.g., copes with stress, popularity). The Bonferroni multiple comparisons procedure indicated that the teachers rated the "divorced" child more negatively on three variables reflecting affective state or relations: Happiness, Emotional Adjustment, and Copes with Stress. (Author)