Children's Aggressive Behavior Tendency in Central Java Coastal Region: The Role of Parent-Child Interaction, Father's Affection and Media Exposure

This study was done to analyze the role of parent-child interaction, father's affection, andmedia exposure in aggressive behavior tendency among children. All participant (n = 293, aged 9-10) were included from children who live in coastal region (n = 105) and non-coastal region (n = 188) in Central Java. In addition, this study also aimed to determine the differences of aggressive behavior tendency level among children in both regions. Discriminant analysis was applied to distinguish groups of children who have aggressive behavior tendency from another group of children who have non-aggressive behavior tendency. And difference analysis was applied to determine the difference of aggressive behavior tendency level in children by their regions and gender. Parent-child interaction, father's affection, and media exposure have a discriminant function (p <.05) to distinguish groups of children who tend to be either aggressive or non-aggressive tendency. Children who live in coastal region have more aggressive behavior tendency (M=48.77) compared to those of children who live in non-coastal region ((M=46.40), t = 2.02, p <.05). Father's affection (discriminant function=.221) was morestrong influence in emerging children's aggressive behavior tendency compare to those of parent-children interaction ((discriminant function = .007), X2 =61.18).