Patterns and Explanations of Direct Physical and Indirect Nonphysical Aggression in Childhood

Abstract

Research on childhood aggression has shown that the form of the behavior measured matters for conclusions regarding social location effects, including gender and age differences. Although aggression has been differentiated in psychological research, the need to clarify the roles of a broad range of structural effects (e.g., family and community characteristics), in addition to age and gender, across levels of analyses on specific outcomes remains. The inclusion of these multilevel risks together would more fully capture sociogenic influences on aggression. Sociological research, in contrast, has emphasized how social structure and processes affect psychological and other life course outcomes (Pearlin, 1989; Aneshensel, Rutter, & Lachenbruch, 1991; Sampson & Laub, [ 1993] 1995). However, research on child well-being in sociology has tended to investigate how environmental features may affect more composite outcomes (e.g., externalizing or internalizing behavior problems)1, or among older youth, specific outcomes like predatory delinquency, while qualitative distinctions in aggression have received little attention.