A comparison of self- And peer-reports of relational aggression in elementary school children

Abstract

A number of different methods for assessing relational aggression have been utilized in previous research. It has been suggested that scores on self-report measures of relational aggression especially in children and adolescents are not associated with scores on other types of measures, suggesting that peer-report measures are more accurate. Nevertheless, few prior studies have directly compared self-and peer-reports. The purpose of the current study was to investigate which type of report is superior. We first developed a new questionnaire to measure relational aggression by self and peers. Elementary school children (grades fourth to sixth; n=243) completed this questionnaire. In addition, their teachers nominated high and low relational-aggressive children in their classes. The two reports were different in terms of correlational analyses, but were almost the same with regards to grouprelated analyses using analyses of variance (ANOVAs). Moreover, girls' peer-reports were more similar to the teacher nominations than they were to their self-reports, and boys also showed a similar trend. We discuss how selfand peer-reports should be used in future studies.