Age-related changes in children's perceptions of aggression and withdrawal in their peers.

Collected peer ratings of aggression, withdrawal, and likeability using the Pupil Evaluation Inventory (PEI) with 326 1st graders, 356 4th graders, and 298 7th graders. Measures of the perceived similarity of all possible pairs of PEI items were derived by computing the frequency with which Ss at each grade level were concurrently nominated by their peers for both items comprising each pair of items. Multidimensional scaling was then employed to elucidate the structure underlying these indices of interitem similarity. Structure ratios denoting the cohesiveness of the clusters of aggression, withdrawal, and likeability items were computed from the results of these analyses. Data show that for Ss of all ages, aggression items and likeability items comprised highly cohesive categories of behaviors that were distinct from each other. Withdrawal items, in contrast, clustered poorly at Grade 1 but became an increasingly cohesive category of behaviors and increasingly distinct from aggression as grade level increased. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)