Peer and Self-Estimated Aggression and Victimization in 8-Year-Old Children From Five Ethnic Groups

Abstract

The Direct & Indirect Aggression Scales (DIAS) (Björkqvist et al. [1992b] Finland: Åbo Akademi University) were applied in order to investigate the perception of aggression among 8‐year‐old children (n=404, girls 200, boys 204) in a cross‐cultural comparison. Two samples from Finland (Finnish and Swedish‐speaking children), two from Chicago, IL (African Americans and Caucasians), and one from Warsaw, Poland, were included in the study. These types of aggressive behavior and victimization of aggression (physical, verbal, and indirect) were measured using both peer and self estimations. Peer estimations were internally more consistent than self estimations. Children rated themselves as significantly less aggressive than their peers rated them. The opposite was true of victimization. An attributional discrepancy index (ADI) was calculated as the difference between self and peer estimated aggression scores. The index may be seen as an indicator of norms pertaining to aggression in different ethnic groups. ADI scores of girls, but not for boys, showed significant variance over culture on all three types of aggression. This indicates greater cultural variation in norms pertaining to aggression for girls than for boys. Cultural variation and sex differences in the patterning of aggressive behavior were analysed using multidimensional scaling (ALSCAL). Cultural variation appeared as distribution along the x‐axis (dimension 1) in a two‐dimensional solution, and sex differences along the y‐axis (dimension 2), indicating that patterns of aggressive behavior are dependent on both culture and sex. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Applying Depression-Distortion Hypotheses to the Assessment of Peer Victimization in Adolescents

“…First, as with many other constructs of social-psychological functioning, findings have revealed only low to moderate correspondence between peer-and self-reported measures of peer victimization in childhood and adolescence (e.g., Graham & Juvonen, 1998;Hawker, 1997;Juvonen, Nishina, & Graham, 2001;Ladd & Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2002;Österman et al, 1994;Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988), and little is known about factors that may contribute to this discordance.…”

Peer and self-reported victimization: Do non-victimized students give victimization nominations to classmates who are self-reported victims?

“…Consistent with earlier studies in which aggregated peer reports and self-reports were compared (e.g., Bouman et al, 2012;Cornell & Brockenbrough, 2004;Graham & Juvonen, 1998;Ladd & Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2002;Österman et al, 1994), the results of the current study highlighted discrepancies between peer and self-reported victimization. That is, self-reports identified substantially more victims per classroom than peer reports.…”

“…These studies generally found that the correlations between the two measurements were moderate at best (e.g., Bouman et al, 2012;Cornell & Brockenbrough, 2004;Graham & Juvonen, 1998;Ladd & Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2002;Österman et al, 1994). Ladd and KochenderferLadd (2002), for example, found that correlations between peer and self-reported victimization varied from .14 to .42 depending on the age of the respondents.…”

The Role of Alcohol and Steroid Hormones in Human Aggression

“…Males of all age groups have been reported to use physical aggression more than females (Björkqvist and Niemelä, 1992;Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974), while the gender difference in the use of verbal aggression has been more inconclusive (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974;Österman et al, 1994). Archer (2000) concluded that when specific acts were measured, women were found to be significantly more likely than men to have used physical aggression toward their partner and to have done so significantly more often.…”