Abstract: 829 7^th,8^th,10^th and 11^th graders who were selected from four ordinary middle schools in Beijing were asked to fulfill an anonymous questionnaire to explore the characteristics of parent-adolescent conflicts.They were all asked to report the frequency and intensity of parent-adolescent conflicts in 8 aspects,including life arrangement,study chores,friends,money spending,appearance,family members and privacy.The styles of parent-adolescent conflict and the tactics they used to cope with the parent-adolescent conflicts were also reported.The results showed; (1) The occurrence of parent-adolescent conflicts is rather low.The frequency and intensity of conflict on life arrangement,study and chores are the top three while the conflicts on the privacy is the least one.Verbal and emotional conflicts are two main forms.To cope with the conflicts of parent-adolescent,adolescents use the avoidance tactics mostly and the third party prevention tactics at the least.(2) Other than the relationship with family members,The frequency and intensity of mother-adolescent conflicts on other 7 aspects are significantly stronger than those of father-adolescent conflicts.(3) Girls have more and stronger conflicts with mothers on the chores than boys while boys have more conflicts with fathers on money spending than girls.Boys have more physical conflicts with parents than girls while girls have more emotional conflicts with parents than boys.As for the four kinds of coping tactics,boys used the third party prevention tactics significantly more than girls.(4) With the increase of grade,the frequency and intensity of Parent-adolescent conflicts follow an inverted U-shaped function that peaks in grade 8,meanwhile the conciliation tactics,avoidance tactics and third party prevention tactics used by adolescent decreased remarkably.

Key words: adolescent, parent-adolescent conflicts, conflict style, coping strategy