한국아동 성장발달 종단연구 2021 (한국아동패널 Ⅱ)

Abstract

The Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) is the first longitudinal study targeting the newborns in Korea. PSKC is a meaningful study in that it provides researchers in the field to analyze the influence of the environment surrounding the children, such as family, school, policy, and community, on the development of children. PSKC has not only provided the longitudinal data and cross sectional data every year, but also offered the annual research reports with PSKC data by analyzing the major variables on characteristics of children and parents. The 14th wave of PSKC in 2021 contains the data about children's development and parent-child relationships as adolescence. As children who participated in the panel study entered the Junior high school this year, the scales were partially modified with variables that can be used for adolescence, and many of the questions that parents have responded instead of the children were changed so that the children could directly respond regarding themselves. In the annual report in 2021, we analyzed the data that were collected in 2020 (13th wave) and provided the characteristics of children, parents, households and community. In total, 1,397 panel families have participated in the 13th year of the survey in 2020. Followings are some representative points from the research results of the 13th wave. First, the 6th grade panel children's mean height for boys is 155.93㎝ (SD = 7.36) and mean height for girls is 154.89cm (SD = 5.88). The 6th grade panel children's mean weight for boys is 52.22kg (SD = 11.34) and mean weight for girls is 47.72kg (SD = 8.87). The percentage of possessing a cell-phone is 94.34%, which is increased compared to 88.8% in 12th wave, The average time of media using is 2.80h per a day(SD = 1.55, which is also increased from 1.80h per day(SD = 1.03) in 12th wave. Second, the mean score of overall happiness in the 13th wave is 2.96 (SD = 0.48) on the 4-point-scale and this is a bit lower than overall happiness in 12th wave (M=3.25). The average score of children's life satisfaction is 3.13 (SD = 0.54) on the 4-point-scale. Third, 41,78% of children responded that they have plan to get married in the future (boys: 44.41%, girls: 39.07%). In addition, 36.70% of children responded positively on the question asking an intention to have a child in the future ((boys: 41.51%, girls: 31.74%). Lastly, the proportion of using the private education is 89.8% for 6th garde excluding the after-school classes. The proportion was different depending on the house income: the children from the household from higher house income tend to use higher proportion of private education compared to that of lower house income. The year 2020 was the year when COVID-19 started to spread around the world and some changes in children's lifestyles during the pandemic period. For example, children in 2020 had much less leisure activities and much more media involvement in the COVID-19 period than the previous year. Therefore, it is necessary to have guideline for children to manage children's healthy life style in pandemic situation. Other than this issue, some suggestions were suggested.