Examining preschool children's questioning tendencies andtheir parents' parenting attitudes

This study aimed to examine the questioning tendencies of preschool children and their parents' parenting attitudes. Using a survey method, the participants consisted of 744 parents and their children selected using random sampling. Data were collected using the Preschool Children's Questioning Tendencies Scale, the Parental Attitudes Scale, and a Demographic Information Form. Since the data did not show a normal distribution, the Kruskal-Wallis H test, the Mann-Whitney U test, and the Spearman Correlation Analysis were used in the data analysis. It was determined that the mean levels of authoritarian and permissive attitudes adopted by the participating parents were low, while the mean levels of democratic and overprotective attitudes were high. Parental attitudes showed significant differences in some sub-dimensions according to their closeness to the child, the child's age, the number of siblings, the child's native language, the child's duration of preschool education, the mother's age, the mother's educational level, the father's educational level, the duration of marriage, and the place of residence; however, no significant differences were found according to the child's gender and the father's age. It was determined that preschool children's questioning tendencies were at a moderate level in the dimension of questions about interests, questions about metaphysics, and the overall scale, while they were at a high level in the dimension of Wh-questions. It was found that preschool children's questioning tendencies showed significant differences in some sub-dimensions according to their gender, age, number of siblings, mother's age, father's age, mother's education level, father's education level, and place of residence. However, it was determined that preschool children's questioning tendencies did not show a significant difference according to their native language, duration of preschool education, and duration of parental marriage. A significant positive correlation was found between democratic parenting attitudes and the sub-dimensions of questions about interests, questions about metaphysics, and Wh-questions, while a significant negative correlation was found between authoritarian parenting attitudes and the questions about interests sub-dimension. A significant positive correlation exists between the overall scale score of preschool children's questioning tendencies and democratic parenting attitudes, while a significant negative correlation exists between the overall scale score and authoritarian parenting attitudes.