The predictability of child rearing practice and city-rural contact on personality characteristic of Thai and Australian psychology students

This study was a survey research. The purpose of this research was to study Thai and Australian students personality and the predictability of child rearing practice and city-rural contact variables on students' personality. The total of 604 research samples comprised of 161 Thai undergraduate Psychology students and 443 Australian undergraduate Psychology students. The Measurements used in this study consisted of Goldberg's (1992) International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and the reliability was 0.82. The Child rearing practice questionnaires had the reliability of 0.82, constructed by Punvadee Somkittikanon which is divided into 3 styles consisted of Democratic style, Restrictiveness style and Overindulgent style. The City-rural contact questionnaires adapted from Voci & Hewstone's (2003) by Stefania Paolini had the reliability of 0.83. It was found that Australian and Thai students' personality differed from each other significantly on the factors of openness, agreeableness, emotion stability and conscientiousness with p <. 05. But there was no difference on extraversion factor. Democratic child rearing style had positive relationship with extraversion, agreeableness and openness to experiences, all at p <. 01 and emotion stability with p <. 05. Overindulgent-nonresponsive child rearing style had a unique significant negative impact on participants' emotion stability and agreeableness, both with p <. 05. Overindulgent-nonresponsive child rearing style, Democratic style and City-Rural contact were positive predictors of participants' openness, all with p <. 05.