Original scientific paper
Measuring School-Children's Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior: Comparison of Ratings of Different Informants
Gordana KERESTEŠ
Abstract
The aim of this study was to compare five measures of
aggressive and prosocial behavior of school children. Data
were collected from elementary school children in grades 5th
to 8th, their parents, classmates, and homeroom teachers.
All five measures of aggression (self-ratings, peer ratings, home-room teachers' ratings, mother ratings, and father
ratings) correlated significantly. Self-ratings of prosocial
behavior correlated significantly only with father ratings,
while the other four measures of prosocial behavior were in
significant intercorrelations. All the correlations were
somewhat higher for aggressive in comparison with
prosocial behavior. Analyses of the concordance between
different informants in identifying the most and the least
aggressive and prosocial children roughly confirmed the
results of the correlational analyses. However, besides self-
-ratings, peer ratings also showed poorer concordance with
other measures. As expected, and in accordance with
numerous previous research findings, boys were rated as
more aggressive than girls, and girls as more prosocial than
boys by all five informants. Advantages and disadvantages
of each measure employed in the study, were highlighted in
the discussion. Practical implications of the results obtained
and importance of assessing behavior in multiple contexts
were also discussed.
Keywords
elementary school children; aggressiveness; prosocial behavior; situational specifics; gender differences
Hrčak ID:
18129
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2006.
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