Measuring School-Children's Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior: Comparison of Ratings of Different Informants Cover Image

Mjerenje agresivnoga i prosocijalnoga ponašanja školske djece: usporedba procjena različitih procjenjivača
Measuring School-Children's Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior: Comparison of Ratings of Different Informants

Author(s): Gordana Keresteš
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar

Summary/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.

  • Issue Year: 15/2006
  • Issue No: 81+82
  • Page Range: 241-264
  • Page Count: 24
  • Language: Croatian