This investigation was designed to extend the work of Chao (1994) by examining parenting constructs emphasised in the Chinese culture in conjunction with parenting constructs derived and emphasised in North America. Mothers of preschool-age children from mainland China ( N = 284) and the United States ( N = 237) completed two self-report parenting questionnaires. One assessed dimensions of parenting practices emphasised in China (encouragement of modesty, protection, directiveness, shaming/love withdrawal, and maternal involvement). The second measured specific stylistic dimensions within Baumrind’s global conceptualisations of authoritative (warmth/acceptance, reasoning/induction, democratic participation) and authoritarian (physical coercion, verbal hostility, nonreasoning/punitive) parenting. Mostly invariant factor structures were obtained across cultures for both measures. Results showed that the five parenting constructs emphasised in China were mostly nonoverlapping and independent in both cultures. In addition, the parenting constructs emphasised in China were relatively independent from the constructs emphasised in North America. As anticipated, Chinese mothers scored higher than US mothers on all parenting constructs emphasised in China except maternal involvement. For parenting constructs emphasised in North America, Chinese mothers scored lower than US mothers on warmth/acceptance and democratic participation, but scored higher on physical coercion.

Cross-informant concordance (peers vs. teachers), temporal stability, and reliability associated with sociometrics were systematically examined in a sample of 84 preschoolers (M ϭ 4.5 years). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parallel forms of teacher and peer sociometrics measured overlapping and unique aspects of peer popularity. Reliability, a characteristic of a measurement instrument (sociometric assessment), was differentiated from stability, which is associated with the phenomenon or behavior being measured (children's peer popularity). Teachermeasured popularity was highly stable over an 8-week period, while peer-measured popularity showed lower stability. High reliability was found for both teacher and peer sociometrics. Child age and classroom participation rates did not alter the pattern or magnitude of the modeled relationships.Acquiring social competence and establishing positive peer relationships are important tasks in normal individual development (Hymel, Vaillancourt, McDougall, & Renshaw, in press). Research indicates that poor social competence and peer rejection are associated with concurrent

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