Analysis of Component of Aggression in the Stories of Elementary School Aggressive Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study is the content analysis of children’s stories based on the components of aggression. Participants are 66 elementary school students (16 girls and 50 boys) selected from fourth and fifth grades, using the Relational and Overt Aggression Questionnaire; completed by the teachers. Draw a Story Test (Silver, 2005) is administered to select aggressive children who narrates stories based on their drawn pictures in response to DAS pictures. DAS Test consists of a series of figures which children respond by drawing a picture and telling a story related to the picture. This provides us with the information about their self image and emotional content. After deciding the components of aggression based on theories of Crick et al. (1997), and Crick and Dodge (1996), the stories are analyzed using the quantitative content analysis technique. The results reveals that the narrated stories of aggressive children have engagement ratio of 1.62, which means more than 50% of children showed aggressive components. The highest frequency of aggression in their stories is related to murdering, killing and hurting others.