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Assessing children's perceptions of prosocial and antisocial peer behaviour

Introduction

Authors

Publisher

Educational Psychology, Vol. 23. No. 5. 2003 pp. 547-567

This study was designed to investigate the judgements children made of other children's social behaviour. The study was the first stage of a larger, ongoing project that has three aims: to categorise different types of children's social behaviour; to differentiate the  social competence skills of prosocial, asocial and antisocial children; and to implement and evaluate a training programme designed to foster children's social competence. The aim of this first study was to categorise different behaviour types. The researchers designed a measure, the 'Child Social and Behaviour Questionnaire' (CSBQ) to help them identify different aspects of children's prosocial behaviour (behaviours which benefit others e.g. sharing or helping) and antisocial behaviour (physical and verbal abuse) and explore the relationships between them.

Three versions of the questionnaire were completed by 321 nine and ten year old children and their teachers in fourteen Scottish primary schools.  The researchers found:

• the children commented more on antisocial than prosocial behaviour;
  
• most children judged to be antisocial were considered unpopular, but some children who saw themselves as antisocial were, surprisingly, judged as popular;
  
• prosocial children appeared to apply stricter criteria for judging behaviour;
  
• bullied pupils identified by their peers were not seen as popular;
  
• both genders believed that boys were more likely to demonstrate verbal abuse than physical abuse;
  
• girls believed that girls were more likely to perform prosocial acts than boys; and
  
• boys believed that boys and girls were equally likely to perform prosocial acts.

The study gives an insight into how children see other children's behaviour which may help practitioners to understand their pupils' behaviour in school. The study may also help inform school policies on bullying and behaviour.

What did the researchers want to find out?

The researchers aimed to look at a range of behaviours that were apparent and meaningful to children, to enable them to identify children who typically behave prosocially, or are bullies or victims of bullying.  The researchers wanted to find out:

• the underlying factors that influence the judgements children make of other children's social behaviour;

• whether there was agreement between self, peer and teacher judgements of children's behaviour; and

• gender similarities and differences in children's judgements of other children's behaviour.

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What categories of behaviour did the researchers identify?

The researchers worked from four categories of prosocial behaviour and four categories of antisocial behaviour, which they derived from previous research into children's experiences. The categories were:

Prosocial
Sharing         - sharing possessions, giving gifts;
Helping         - physical or practical help, for example with schoolwork, or after an accident;
Caring          - psychological support, sympathy or comfort, empathy, loyalty; and
Inclusion       - befriending, making someone welcome, preventing isolation by playing with them.

Antisocial
Verbal abuse    - ridicule, threats, aggressive gestures, dirty looks;
Physical abuse  - hitting, kicking, tripping, spitting, throwing things, intent to cause injury;
Rejection          - ganging up on or excluding someone, stealing friends; and
Delinquency     - stealing possessions, vandalism, extortion.

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What judgements did the children make of their peers' behaviour?

The researchers reported on the following findings:

• the children identified their peers with prosocial behaviours much more readily than with antisocial behaviours or victimisation - on average, each child received 24 prosocial, 7.8 antisocial and 5.5 victim nominations out of a possible sixty four pro- and antisocial nominations and thirty two victim nominations;
• the numbers of each type of nomination varied considerably between schools which may have been a reflection of behavioural differences in the classrooms or differences in children's attitudes towards what is good and bad behaviour (for example, the average number of prosocial nominations received by each child ranged from 14.9 in one school to 31.6 in another, whilst antisocial nominations ranged from 3.8 to 14.1 and victim nominations ranged from 1.8 to 8.6);
• children who were judged by their peers to behave antisocially were also judged as unpopular - this unpopularity was associated with both physical and verbal abuse;
  children who saw themselves as behaving in an antisocial manner were, surprisingly, judged as popular by other children, implying that children who judge themselves as behaving antisocially, did not use the same criteria as when they identified their peers with these behaviours;
• whether the children saw themselves as prosocial had a major influence on how they judged other children's behaviour - prosocial children appeared to have higher expectations of themselves and others than their antisocial peers and therefore applied stricter criteria when differentiating between acceptable social behaviours;
• there was some agreement between victims and their peers as to the identity of the victims, and victims were not judged to be popular, although they were not necessarily unpopular; and
• the children made judgements about their peers' more common prosocial behaviour, but their overall judgements were influenced by antisocial behaviour, suggesting that while prosocial behaviours were more common, antisocial behaviours were more prominent.

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Did boys and girls differ in how they saw other children's behaviour?

The researchers found some similarities between the boys and girls in this study in how they saw the other children's behaviours.  Both genders:

• thought physical abuse was the province of boys, although 20% of the antisocial nominations made by both boys and girls were directed at girls;
• were more likely to nominate boys as verbal aggressors  (teasing, name-calling etc) although this behaviour is often believed to be a female form of aggression; and
• made more prosocial nominations than antisocial or victim nominations.

The researchers found several differences between boys and girls:

• boys nominated physical and verbal abuse behaviours the same number of times - in both cases nominating other boys four times more often than girls;
• girls nominated more verbal than physical abuse behaviours in other children and nominated boys twice as often as girls;
• boys were equally likely to nominate either other boys or girls as behaving prosocially (caring, sharing, helping etc) however,  girls saw other girls as twice as likely as boys to behave in a prosocial manner; and
• there was a clear gender effect for victim nominations - both genders were more likely to nominate a child of the same sex as themselves.

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How was the study designed?

Altogether, 321 nine and ten year old children (170 boys and 151 girls) and their teachers from fourteen primary schools in mixed socio-economic areas of west central Scotland took part in the study.  The age group was chosen because of research evidence that their social roles are relatively stable by this stage.

Three versions of a specially developed questionnaire were given to collect information about the children's perceptions of their own and their peers’ behaviour, and the teachers' perceptions of the children's behaviour. The twenty-four item questionnaires included two examples of each of the following characteristics: helping, sharing, caring, inclusive behaviours, physical abuse, verbal abuse, delinquency and rejection.  There were also eight filler items for non-social behaviours (such as, reading a comic and eating dinner).

For the self questionnaire, the researcher read out the questions and the child pointed to one of three cards to indicate whether s/he engaged in the behaviour often, sometimes or never.  For the peer questionnaire, children were presented with cards which had the names of eight children in their class and the child pointed to the name of a classmate whom they had seen engaging in that particular behaviour. Each child's name in a class was made available for nomination eight times. Teachers were asked to indicate how often each child engaged in prosocial or antisocial behaviours, or was the victim of bullying, on a five-point scale ranging from never to often.

Each child's popularity and unpopularity was measured by asking children individually to name three children in their class they liked to play with and three they did not like to play with. The children were first asked practice questions concerning innocuous behaviours, such as playing with a yo yo.

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What are the implications of the study?

In completing this digest, the authors began to ask the following questions about implications for practitioners:

• researching pupil perceptions can be a powerful way of developing both pupils' and teachers' understanding of pupils' beliefs, knowledge and attitudes. Would carrying out and sharing the results studies of perception with pupils help to influence their behaviour and understand its implications for their peers
• could your school do more to encourage children to behave prosocially (with kindness and responsibility) for example, through sport, through buddying systems for the playground, through helping younger pupils or disadvantaged groups in the community (see where can I find out more)?
• does your school know all it needs to know about the extent of bullying (how much is taking place, where and when it occurs etc)?
• would finding out more about pro and antisocial behaviour help your school to promote prosocial behaviour and to plan approaches to PSHE and the school culture? For example, do girls in your school feel that boys behave prosocially less often, and if they do, are they failing to observe and reinforce boys’ attempts at prosocial behaviour, or are boys over estimating the prosocial behaviour of other boys?

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Where can I find out more?

Information about improving children's behaviour is available on the DfES web site at:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/behaviourandattendance/

The talking teacher website has several useful articles written by teachers about managing children's behaviour, such as how a special needs primary teacher used puppets to help overcome behaviour issues. This article is available at:
http://www.talkingteaching.co.uk/resources/show_resource.cfm?id=99

Practitioners may find the article 'What makes kids care? Teaching gentleness in a violent world' useful. It can be viewed at: http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/altruism.html

An article that describes how sport can be used as a context for teaching prosocial behaviour to adolescents with disruptive behaviour can be found at:
http://www.lin.ca/lin/resource/html/gtr6/dc001b.pdf

The 'anti-bullying network' has a comprehensive web site with useful information on, for example, school and classroom strategies for reducing bullying. The site can be found at:
http://www.antibullying.net/schoolstaff.htm

Teachers' expectations of boys' and girls' behaviour are explored in 'Boys, girls and achievement: addressing the classroom issues' by Dr Becky Francis. Brief details of her research can be found at:
http://www.gre.ac.uk/pr/releasearchive/484.htm

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