Development and refinement of the Peer Aggressive Behavior Scale–PAB-S

Abstract

Child aggressive behavior is a growing research topic in several fields of knowledge. Nonetheless, there are few instruments in Brazil designed to assess such a construct. The aim of this study was to present a new instrument to assess aggressive behavior among children: The Peer Aggressive Behavior Scale (PAB-S). Two studies are presented. The first describes the items development procedures, as well as evidence of content validity. It also presents the procedures used to refine the instrument and initial evidence of validity based on the internal structure of the refined version of the PAB-S. The second study evaluates, in an independent sample, the goodness-of-fit of the refined version and compares them with those presented by the initial version. A sample of 974 children (52,3 % girls) aged between 7 and 13 years old, attending public and private schools from Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, participated in the study. The results indicate that the PAB-S fits a one-dimensional instrument in both the initial (39 items) and the refined version (25 items). The results suggest evidence of content validity and validity based on the internal structure of the scale. Further studies are needed to gather evidence of validity based on external variables.

Invariância de medida e evidências de validade externa da Peer Aggressive Behavior Scale (PAB-S)

“…Os resultados sustentaram esta hipótese, tanto para a Escala de Comportamentos Agressivos (ECA) quanto a Escala de Reação à Agressão (ERA) do Q-CARP (Borsa, 2014b). A forte correlação da PAB-S com ambas as escalas independentes do Q-CARP pode ser entendida enquanto representativa do fato de que, em sua construção e refinamento, a PAB-S combinou itens referentes aos comportamentos agressivos tanto proativos quanto reativos em um único fator geral (Borsa, 2016).…”

“…Conforme previamente descrito, o estudo de Borsa (2016) demonstrou evidências de validade de construto por análise fatorial para a PAB-S com bons índices de ajuste da estrutura de um fator. Além disso, no estudo de Borsa (2016), os 25 itens da PAB-S não demonstraram funcionamento diferencial entre gêneros ou entre faixas etárias de crianças mais jovens e mais velhas, sugerindo evidências de que são interpretados similarmente entre esses grupos. No presente estudo, o coeficiente alfa de Cronbach de consistência interna da PAB-S foi 0,94.…”

Proactive and Reactive Aggressive Behaviors: Dimensionality of Self-Report Scales

“…The Peer Aggressive Behavior Scale (PAB-S; Borsa, 2016): The PAB-S is a Brazilian 25-item self-report questionnaire, in which 15 items address PA-related behaviors and 10 address RA. The content of the items involves either direct physical (e.g., “ When a colleague does something that makes me sad, I beat him ”) or verbal (e.g.…”

“…For the LPA, in turn, if one assumes the independence of RA and PA dimensions, then it would be expected to find one or more latent classes containing individuals that exhibit only one kind of these aggressive behaviors but not the other (Smeets et al, 2017). In this study, The Peer Aggressive Behavior Scale (PAB-S; Borsa, 2016)) and the Peer Aggressive and Reactive Behavior Questionnaire (PARB-Q; Gremign, Damásio, & Borsa, 2013) were employed. The PAB-S and PARB-Q are two new AB self-report scales, which have been recently developed (Borsa, 2016) and adapted (Gremigni et al, 2013) to the Brazilian context.…”

“…In this study, The Peer Aggressive Behavior Scale (PAB-S; Borsa, 2016)) and the Peer Aggressive and Reactive Behavior Questionnaire (PARB-Q; Gremign, Damásio, & Borsa, 2013) were employed. The PAB-S and PARB-Q are two new AB self-report scales, which have been recently developed (Borsa, 2016) and adapted (Gremigni et al, 2013) to the Brazilian context. Both scales present adequate psychometric properties and evidences of validity, as described in the Method section.…”