| A large body of literature suggests the importance of examining certain high-risk behaviors, particularly aggression (overt/relational), as significant predictors of later outcomes as violence, substance abuse, and some forms of psychopathology. The literature also shows that agreement on these high-risk behaviors is inconsistent across raters. With social-cognitive theory forming its foundation, this study examined whether teacher-identified individual child-rater characteristics define the relationship between peer- and teacher-correlations on measures of overt and relational aggression. Additionally, prosocial behaviors were measured, as one potential contributing variable toward the aforementioned discrepancies. Participants were fifth-grade, urban students from schools located outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Teachers and participating children completed rating scales to identify early high-risk (overt and relational aggression) and prosocial behaviors. While lack of power limited ability to detect significance within the current sample, a review of the literature suggests that characteristics of the child-rater might influence the strength of correlations between teacher- and peer-ratings. Trends reviewed suggest that children who display overtly and/or relationally aggressive behaviors rate their peers differently than do nonaggressive children. Additional research with a larger sample size is needed to determine the true impact child-rater characteristics may have on their ratings of their peers. |
