Continuity of type a behavior during childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence

The continuity of Type A behavior during childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence was studied in 1403 randomly selected children. The subjects' Type A behavior was evaluated by their mothers and also self-rated by preadolescents and adolescents using the AFMS (Type A Behavior for the Finnish Multicenter Study) questionnaire, which is a method based on the Matthews Youth Test for Health and the Swedish version of the Jenkins Activity Survey. The results showed that when mothers' assessments were used, Type A behavior was very highly and homotypically stable during the periods studied, and there were no sex- and age-related differences. Among the different components of Type A pattern, "impatience-aggression" exhibited slightly greater stability than "leadership-sense of responsibility." Mothers' assessments had predictive significance in the self-ratings given three years later, especially in girls, while the continuity of the self-ratings over adolescence was rather low.