The Measurement of Anger in Children: A Multi-Modal Approach

The objective of this study was to utilize self-report, peer-report and teacher-report techniques in measuring (reporting) anger in children; and to determine the intercorrelation between these three approaches in order to determine their relationship to one another and in turn, to assess these reporting tools. Subjects were 38 male and female emotionally disturbed children from the Virginia Treatment Center for Children, a short-term residential psychiatric facility in Richmond, Virginia. There were 28 boys and 10 girls, with a mean age of approximately 11 years. Each student was given the Children\u27s Inventory of Anger (CIA) and the Peer-Report of Anger (PR). The teachers were given the Teacher\u27s Rating Scale of Student\u27s Anger (TR) to complete for each of their students and again approximately 6 weeks later for test-retest information. Each instrument was explained in detail in the present paper. Means and standard deviations for all scales were reported as were the Pearson Product-Moment Correlations among the 3 scales and race, sex and age. A significant negative correlation between the CIA and age was found. The CIA was also significantly negatively correlated with the PH non-anger expression; while the CIA was significantly positively correlated with the PH anger problems. Other significant correlations were: a positive one between the TH and the PH anger problems; and, a negative one between the PH anger problems and the PH non-anger expression. The various relationships and their possible explanations were discussed in depth. It was noted that although the significant correlations obtained in this study were relatively low and were not consistent with the predictions under the hypothesis, the data and the relationships between report forms were in the direction predicted. In this case, the magnitude of each correlation may not be of prime importance because each form may have measured a different aspect of anger as per Ullman\u27s (1951) findings. Thus, combining the three techniques gives a broad picture of each individual\u27s degree of anger problems. Problems and suggestions for future investigations in this area were briefly mentioned