A Prosocial Scale for the Preschool Behaviour Questionnaire: Concurrent and Predictive Correlates

Abstract

The Preschool Behaviour Questionnaire has been used widely to assess children's aggressive, anxious, and hyperactive behaviour. Items from the Prosocial Behaviour Questionnaire were added to create a prosocial scale. The resulting questionnaire was administered to teachers of three large samples of kindergarten children and shown to have three stable, orthogonal components disruptive (13 items): anxious (6 items); and prosocial (10 items). Mother and peer assessments of children were used to investigate concurrent and predictive validity. Concurrent data showed that the disruptive component was highly correlated with peer assessments and moderately correlated with mother assessments; the prosocial component was moderately correlated with peer assessments but marginally correlated with mother assessments, whereas the anxious component was marginally correlated with peer assessments and moderately correlated with mother assessments. From a predictive perspective it was shown that highly disruptive boys in kindergarten who were prosocial, were assessed by mothers and teachers at age 9 to be better adjusted than highly disruptive boys in kindergarten who were non-prosocial.