Capturing mechanisms of change: Weekly covariation in anger regulation, hostile intent attribution, and children's aggression

Abstract

Interventions for children's aggression typically target assumed underlying mechanisms, such as anger regulation and hostile intent attribution. The expectation here is that targeting these mechanisms will result in within-person changes in aggression. However, evidence for these mechanisms is mostly based on between-person analyses. We, therefore, examined whether within-person changes in adaptive anger regulation and hostile intent attribution covaried with within-person changes in children's aggression.Children (N = 223; age 7-12; 46% boys) filled out four weekly report measures to assess adaptive anger regulation, hostile intent attribution, and aggression. The psychometric properties of these novel measures were adequate. Results of multi-level analyses revealed within-person effects: weekly changes in adaptive anger regulation and hostile intent attribution covaried with changes in children's aggression. This corresponded with between-person findings on the same data: children with lower levels of adaptive anger regulation and higher levels of hostile intent attribution reported more aggression than other children. These findings support the idea that targeting anger regulation and hostile intent attribution in interventions may lead to changes in individual children's aggression.

Within Intervention Change: Anger Regulation and Hostile Intent Attribution as Mechanisms to Reduce Children’s Aggressive Behavior

“…An intervention with weekly sessions should, in theory, be able to produce weekly changes in these mechanisms. Indeed, a recent study has revealed that weekly changes in adaptive anger regulation and hostile intent attribution covaried with weekly changes in children's aggression (Alsem, Keulen, et al, 2022). The present study builds on these ndings by examining, within an intervention study, whether causing changes in these mechanisms would go together with reductions in children's aggression.…”

“…The psychometric quality of the weekly measures used in the current study were investigated in an earlier study. Results showed adequate internal consistency, convergent, and concurrent validity for the childreport version (Alsem, Keulen, et al, 2022).…”

“…We conducted our intervention study in a naturalistic setting by including multiple clinical centers, recruiting children in routine care, and examine effects under real-world conditions, promoting external validity. Using brief weekly measures in clinical practice is feasible, and these 3-items measures were well-validated in a previous study (Alsem, Keulen, et al, 2022). Last, we used a multi-informant approach to assess aggressive behavior problems, as the correspondence between informants in aggression reports is relatively low (De Los Reyes et al, 2015).…”

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“…Ratings were averaged across items. The child report version of this measure was investigated in another study (n = 223, M age = 10.18, SD = 1.21; (Alsem, Keulen, et al, 2022). Results showed adequate internal consistency (i.e., Cronbach's α's ranged from .64 to .69 over four weeks) and supported the convergent and concurrent validity.…”

“…To assess weekly change in children's aggression during the treatment, a measure was needed that can be used for such frequently repeated measurements (Lischetzke, 2014). Therefore, we chose to use a new weekly report measure (Alsem, Keulen, et al, 2022). Parents and children rated three items (i.e., 'This week I/my child fought with someone,' 'This week I/my child kicked or beat someone,' and 'This week I/my child called someone names') on a scale from 1 ('never) to 5 ('very often').…”